Quote Originally Posted by rainichan View Post
Banri Oda, the main world and lore builder for the series, looks outside his Japanese roots to create correct environments for every area in FFXIV, he's stated repeatedly on record that he loves learning about other cultures and reading different kinds of books that give him inspiration for everything he's created for FFXIV. The only true Japanese holiday that's celebrated in XIV is the way New Year is celebrated as more of a Lunar New Year, and Little Ladies Day which is just Children's Day. Halloween, Christmas, Valentines are pretty obvious Western holidays that are popular in Japan. Summer is debatable as there are many holidays in a lot of cultures that happen during what we'd see as the Summer months. The only collabs that XIV has done are within their own franchises - FFXI, Dragon Quest, FFXIII, and FFXV. All of them take place in fantasy worlds that are not confined to Japan, and the only real argument that you can get to in that is "FFXI's Summer event is distinctly Japan", but the rest really aren't, and XIV is pretty similar to their holiday quests.
I mean.. that's fine, lots of artists do that, but it's still ultimately a Japanese product. The environment artists behind Fallout New Vegas also traveled around the real-life Mojave desert on a motorbike, taking pictures and recording ambient audio, in addition to researching old Las Vegas history and lore, but it doesn't change the fact that it's still a modern-American's take on Americana.
Lunar New Year isn't the only one, in fact I'd hardly consider it Japanese, it's far too generalized. But SE also celebrates Tanabata in FFXIV, also known as the 'Star Festival', which is a summertime holiday that originates from a festivity in Chinese mythology where the convergence of two gods is represented by stars and is commemorated with wishes.

They've also done collabs with NiER Automata (literally, who hasn't) and Yo-Kai Watch. There are probably a few others, but they're JP properties nonetheless.