Question for the Aussies

[dios4vida]

(Please excuse the ignorant American!)

Having never been south of the Equator, I have no idea what it's like to have the seasons backwards from what I grew up with. Since most of the Christmas traditions up here revolve around the fact that it's wintertime, I imagine your Christmas must be very different than mine. (We by no means have snow or anything where I live, but it's still cold by our standards.)

How do you guys celebrate a summer Christmas??

[cheekychook]

I'm no Aussie, but two of my close friends are, so I can tell you their Christmas traditions. The best I can do for comparison would be to say that it's similar to our 4th of July celebrations. BBQ's, fireworks, fruit salads, cold meat platters---summery celebration foods. I imagine the traditions vary a bit regionally as their seasons vary in degrees (literally).

[Jenemb]

With seafood and wine!

I live in the tropics, so Christmas Day is always stinking hot. Strangely, most of our Christmas cards have snow and winter scenes on them, so we're conditioned to want a white Christmas from an early age. Like most years, I'm stuck working nights, so our Christmas tradition is as follows:

At 6 am, when I finish work, the whole extended family meets at my sister's house (where all our presents are, and the youngest kids!) for a breakfast of coffee and Danishes. Then we open presents, and at about 8 am I slink off back to my place to get some sleep. I turn up again for lunch. Lunch is usually seafood, salads, and fresh mangoes. Yay - tropics! Our one concession to the winter tradition is the roast - usually a chicken because turkeys are over-rated...or my brother-in-law just doesn't know how to cook them. I sure don't.

When I was a kid we always went to the beach before lunch on Christmas Day - I think Dad was trying to run the energy out of us. The beach was always crowded on Christmas Day.

Usually by the late afternoon the kids have gone feral with toy madness and sugar overload, it's either steaming hot or bucketing down rain, and I go home to get some more sleep before work. And dinner is usually a ham sandwich, because I ate too much at lunch. I used to be a bit depressed about sleeping half the day away because I was working nights, but then I had a change of heart. I get to spend half of Christmas with my family, and half with my friends from work, and it's not that bad after all!

I think it would be lovely to have a real Christmas tree instead of my plastic one just for once. You can get them here now, but, honestly, it seems like a waste of a good tree!

Merry Christmas!

[Heather B]

Christmas is awesome - no matter what the weather is like.

On a normal Aussie chrissy, my boyfriend and I alternate between our families in the mornings. Generally, the kids get some pretty active presents so we usually end up playing footy/running around with nerf guns/riding motorbikes while we scoff ourself on Jatz and dip.

(*Footy in this instance means Rugby League - not soccer. Nerf guns are like air rifles that shoot foam bullets; and are awesome BTW. Jatz are like ??crackers/biscuits??)

Lunch involves me going to my aunties where our whole family gathers for presents. There's lots of food (ham/turkey/pork), fruit platters, lollies and playing with toys. We'll go swimming for a lot of the day and usually end up REALLY sunburnt and start the drinking around noon with my aunts awesome pineapple cocktails (that are served, incidentally, in a pineapple).

By the time night rolls around I'll meet up with some friends and we'll welcome in boxing day in a drunken stupor. Generally it doesn't get dark until nine at night so there's lots of time to celebrate.



And as an Aussie with an unhealthy fascination with snow, what is it like to celebrate a white christmas?

[jkmcdonnell]

Seafood and cocktails here, too. Last Christmas we went out on the boat and swam with dolphins. Another hallmark of the Aussie Christmas is a fake tree, which I think our antipodean cousins struggle to wrap their heads around. We're also big on Boxing Day, and most people spend it either sleeping, watching cricket (guys) or shopping (crazy people), and always whilst demolishing the leftovers.

[abc]

I spent a Christmas in Australia once. We all wore colorful paper crowns and pulled apart some kind of wrapped tubish thing that maybe gently exploded? It was a long time ago. But the presents and the tree and Santa were all part of it. Aussies rule!

[Jaime]

. . . it's either steaming hot or bucketing down rain

Aww, Jenemb, I hope your house hasn't been washed away! :(

I spent a Christmas in Australia once. We all wore colorful paper crowns and pulled apart some kind of wrapped tubish thing that maybe gently exploded? It was a long time ago. But the presents and the tree and Santa were all part of it. Aussies rule!

Hells yeah, Aussies rule! :P We do the explody-things in our family every year. We call them party poppers, and spend most of the arvo telling the kids not to aim them at each other when they pull the string, or someone'll lose an eye! But they have fun collecting all the streamers that come out :D

One of my husband's uncles always dresses up as Santa, and we all - yes, the adults too, have to sit on his knee and pick out a lucky dip present. It's always hilarious, but I feel sorry for them! That Santa suit is very, very hot in the sun!

[Jaime]

I spent a Christmas in Australia once. We all wore colorful paper crowns and pulled apart some kind of wrapped tubish thing that maybe gently exploded? It was a long time ago. But the presents and the tree and Santa were all part of it. Aussies rule!

My bad. I just saw the word 'tubish'. They're what we call bon-bons, which is where the paper crowns come from, as well as some terrible jokes on a little slip of paper! There's usually a little plastic toy for the kiddies, too. :D

[Jenemb]

Hi Jaime,

Aww, Jenemb, I hope your house hasn't been washed away! :(

My house is still here! I'm in Townsville, a good few hours north of the massive flooding. We always get moderate flooding during the wet season, but nothing like what they're seeing down south at the moment.

It looks fairly bad. I have friends in the southeast corner, and they've copped it bad. Nobody I know has lost their house, but I have a cousin in Bundaberg who's currently camping in an evacuation centre. She thinks her house is okay, but hasn't been able to get back and check yet.

Seems like it is going to get worse before it gets better - there are now flood warnings out for northern NSW as well.