An Aussie Christmas

As a regular reader and blog buddy of Norm's, I’ve been asked to fill a guest posting role to share Christmas traditions from Australia – the land downunder.

















An Aussie Christmas is upside down to a northern hemisphere one. Christmas is celebrated in summer. There’s no snow, sleigh-bells, or Santa wearing a winter woolens under his red suit. In fact the weather is usually so hot, Santa would be more comfortable wearing Speedos!

Carols
Carols by Candlelight is an Aussie tradition, introduced in Melbourne in 1937 by a radio announcer who felt Christmas was often a lonely time for people. As a remedy he introduced community carol singing with the added fun of everyone holding candles.

Carols by Candlelight is broadcast live from the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne on Christmas Eve and is part of many family traditions – gathering in the lounge room – to sing carols and be entertained by Australia’s leading performers.

Based on the popularity of the Melbourne event, many local communities and churches hold their own small scale Carols by Candlelight event in the lead up to Christmas.

Australia has their own versions of many popular carols, and one written just for us by Rolf Harris in 1960 He thought it was crazy to sing songs about snow when it was stinking hot outside so he wrote Six White Boomers. Go have a listen.

Food
The fact that the holiday season falls in summer here, makes many northern hemisphere Christmas traditions seem a bit silly. That doesn’t stop some Aussies from still insisting that it’s “just not Christmas” unless traditions of countries on the other side of the globe are followed.

It can be 40 degrees [remember we’re talking Celsius here] on the day, but many families still insist on a “traditional” Christmas dinner of roast meat, baked veggies, and steamed plum pudding with hot custard. In many parts of Australia, Christmas day is so hot, putting an oven on in the kitchen for several hours is just pure insanity.

Contemporary Aussies favour salads and seafood, or a big BBQ meal. This makes more sense because of the weather. Stone fruit are in season – so we love platters of cherries, nectarines, mangoes, apricots and peaches. Big slices of juicy red watermelon are always popular in the warm weather, along with pawpaw, kiwifruit and berries.

Sport
We have lived on the coast most of our lives, so water-sports are another feature of Christmas. Surfing, swimming, snorkeling, sailing, waterskiing – Mr X’s family are all big water-sport fans. So if he has a say, the holiday season includes any of the above activities – in fact, it’s just not Christmas without them!

The day after Christmas day is Boxing Day. So for those that only get the public holidays, there are two in a row. An English tradition was to have Christmas Day with family, then Boxing Day was spent giving gifts to employees or the poor.

These days in Australia Boxing Day might mean something else entirely – two days of being with family, eating and drinking too much . . .
but in our house it means Mr X wants a few hours undisturbed time to watch the start of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht race on TV.

Previously we've experienced the thrills and dangers of being on yacht in Sydney Harbour as the race fleet sails out the heads and turns right for their journey south. Another year, we were lucky enough to be in Hobart to see the yachts arrive at the finish line and deliver a hot cappuccino to a friend who crewed on one of the boats.

Bushfire
Christmas is also the peak of the fire season in Australia. Hot weather, dry bush and northerly winds. Add into the mix lots of camping, BBQ’s, tourists and holiday revelers, and a stray bit of flame quickly becomes an inferno.

We built this Aussie nativity scene out of leftovers from our house building site. It shows how bushfire smoke can taint the air. It puts a yellow, orange tinge in the sky and the smell of ash and smoke gets in everything, including the water tanks.

Living as we do on an island, we have our own fire protection systems in place, which include fast fill water pumps and high pressure hoses, potato sacks to wet and douse grass fires with, long sleeve tops, eye goggles and gloves. A couple of December's ago, we had our first experience of an ash storm. Like you guys have snow right now, we had black ash falling from the sky and covering everything. Thankfully this year we've had a couple of weeks rain so things aren't as dry as they were then.

Belief
On the whole Australia is a secular postmodern country. Recent census statistics show that nearly 20% of Australian’s state “no religion” on their census. Some 50% state Christian, with the remaining 30% aligning themselves with non-Christian religions. In recent years the political correctness police* have tried to get rid of the word Christmas in the public sector, schools in particular, and the banning of carol events and the like. Their argument being that - as a very multicultural country - the celebration of Christmas in the religious sense is supposedly offensive to non-believers.

Whenever these stories pop up in the media, there is a public outcry. And so there should be. The celebration of Christmas is part of our tradition – albeit, in slightly different ways than our northern neighbours – and political correctness is a poor excuse to stamp out a holiday season that encourages generosity, family time, and for those who choose, time to contemplate a story larger than their own.


Seasons greeting to you and yours from
Kel of The X Facta


*this a label, not a reality, we do not have a police force that deals with crimes against political correctness ;-)