1. Spend your entire childhood and adolescence in Australia reading books from the northern hemisphere. Pretend that you understand the following things: mint jelly; tobogganing; conkers. Dream about snow. Dream about roasted chestnuts. Dream about mince pies. Dream about Christmas tree forests, the heavy scent of pine and cold. Dream about Christmas sweaters, the uglier the better. Dream about opening presents in front of an open fire. Dream of deep, long, dark nights, and the hope of stars.
2. Move overseas. Spend a Christmas in Ireland sitting in a pub with your aunt and uncle, drinking hot whiskey. Wander down cobblestone streets and come across Glen Hansard and Sinead O’Connor busking on a corner. (Leave before Bono gets there.) Go ice skating on Boxing Day, which they call St. Stephen’s Day. Call your family across the hours and miles. Be incandescently happy.
3. Spend a Christmas in England: you and your girlfriend, both of you alone without family for the first time. Prepare the roast yourselves, careful and then skipping around the kitchen with pride when it turns out okay — better than okay, delicious. Take a morning walk through cold, bare streets, one hand tucked into a new faux fur jacket, one hand holding your girlfriend’s, both of you wearing terrible Santa hats, and smile at the other families you pass and the little children rugged up in coats so puffy they seem in constant risk of toppling over and rolling harmlessly down Bristol’s hills. When they wish you a Merry Christmas, say it back, thrilled at your own accent here, here at last.
4. Start planning your third Christmas, your first with your girlfriend-now-wife-haha-oh-man’s family. Plan presents and lie awake drowsily talking them over with your girlfriend-now-wife-etc. Discuss family traditions, swapping stories in the dark. Start to get excited about Hastings, the little seaside town she’s from, with its pebbled beaches and stormy hills and cosy pubs. Start thinking about what the sky will look like on Christmas morning: fog and steely grey, your favourite kind of weather.
5. Laugh along with all the people who are complaining, outraged, that it’s too early to think about Christmas shopping. Then stop and realise that actually, if you want to be sure your parcel home will get there in time (unlike the last two years), you’d better send it by the 1st of December. Go shopping. Buy your mum the traditional joke present. Buy your little sister every Taylor Swift-related item you can find. Think about them opening the gifts. Think about your favourite part of Christmas, which is the opening of presents — not the receiving but the giving — truly nauseating, you know, but the thing about your family, as you explain over and over, is that you’re all really good at it.
6. Try to explain how funny your family is. Your presents to one another are always both thoughtful and hilarious. Talk about the time your sister, aged seventeen, declared it was an outrage that your younger siblings — aged respectively six and nine — were allowed to make their presents, while she and you must spend actual money on them. Tell how you spent one Christmas Eve in spasms of laughter, watching your sister create a series of deliberately awful presents: a tissue disguised as a bookmark. A drinking straw, bent in half, for the six-year-old boy who wanted a toy gun. The next morning, you watched your extended family members stare in gentle bemusement while you and your parents and your siblings shrieked with laughter at a shoebox labelled with a Sharpie: “IPOD SPEAKERS, I GUESS?”
7. Miss your family. That’s normal.
8. Miss the food. Miss the last Australian Christmas, when you and your mum made four or five bowls of different salads: spicy potato salad, lacking the mayonnaise, with extra spring onion; watermelon and feta salad, pink and sweet and salty in a giant glass bowl; chickpea salad; coleslaw salad; a salad that was all spring greens; a salad that was all earthy browns. And then complemented with the barbecue your dad presided over, his akubra tilted back, sweating and laughing over sausages and lamb chops, Triple J turned up high on the radio.
9. Miss even the food on the Christmases when everyone grimly bowed to tradition and spent four or so hours in a kitchen that was rapidly climbing over forty degrees (Celsius, thanks). Miss everyone’s sweaty, cross faces and the arguments over whether Australian turkeys are even the same breed as northern hemisphere ones. Miss your mum’s gravy and your dad’s bad jokes about marrying her for her gravy. Miss lying under the table, aged ten, with your sister, dropping ice cubes down each other’s backs. Miss everyone taking their plates outside, to hot verandas, in search of a breeze.
Miss waking up on Christmas Day and launching yourself into the sea, shrieking with your sisters and brother, the sun hot on your shoulders, the water a cool slap in your face.
10. Miss Christmas on a beach. Miss Christmas in some rented or borrowed beach house, and the troop down to the sea first thing in the morning, dragging along presents if you’re still attached, hoping the sand doesn’t get too engritted in the pages of a new book or the wheels of a new remote-control car. Miss waking up on Christmas Day and launching yourself into the sea, shrieking with your sisters and brother, the sun hot on your shoulders, the water a cool slap in your face. Miss taking your body board down with you and skimming along the foamy surface of the waves, delivered tumbling and laughing to where your parents sit on the sand, their legs outstretched and their faces grinning. Miss someone’s tinsel-strewn beach towel. Miss comparing presents with other children in the sand. Miss the slow trips back to the house for meals and naps, and then back down to the beach again, until these treks blend into a long and endless day with waves lapping at you, with salt drying on your skin, with your sister’s nose peeling pink. Miss the low cry of seagulls. Miss the sunset, when it finally comes, pink and orange and bouncing across the water.
11. You can even miss spending Boxing Day sunburned and grumpy and aching from fighting the strength of the current. Miss the way the ocean beats you up. It’s kind of fun.
12. Miss Australia’s bizarre, endearing attempts to marry northern hemisphere traditions with a scorching southern hemisphere sun. Miss the stories about Father Christmas travelling in this part of the world with kangaroos, rather than reindeer. Miss the attempts to replace ugly Christmas sweaters with ugly Christmas rashies. Miss the updated Christmas carols, with their occasionally dodgy rhyme schemes (“Dashing through the bush / In a rusty Holden Ute”). Miss the way your dad used to leave out carrots and a bucket of water for the reindeer (“They’ll be thirsty!”) and biscuits and a cool bottle of beer for Father Christmas (“He’ll be thirstier”).
13. Miss the cool change, the real magic of Australian Christmas and Australian summer, which people talk about as some mythic, anthropic thing. Miss waiting for the cool change, sitting out in the baking-hot, still evenings, counting down your advent and tasting the moment the air changes.
14. Don’t miss the way Christmas specials, Christmas movies, Christmas TV shows always seemed vaguely bizarre to you. Admit it: Christmas special episodes are excellent. They make much more sense now that you’re no longer watching them sprawled on the couch in short shorts and a singlet, pressing a cold beer against your cleavage, watching with the drugged glazed look in your eyes you get when it’s that hot. Enjoy the Christmas specials now. Watch all of your favourites every year.
15. But you can miss watching Love, Actually with your mum.
16. Miss the length of the day, a Christmas Day that is maybe two or three times longer than you get in the northern hemisphere. A Christmas Day that starts early enough to please even the most excitable children, a Christmas Day that lingers on and on and on, from a sweet blue-skied morning to a hot afternoon that leaves you panting and stretched out still, through the kind of lazy afternoon that demands naps and a night that never comes. Miss the way you would sit outside with your family, swatting mozzies, sleepy-drunk and full of food, watching the sky stay light, and light, and light.
Wow, this makes me miss something I’ve never had (an Australian Christmas).
I, a Russian Jew living in the United States, now miss Australian Christmas.
Christmas on the beach sounds like everything I’ve ever dreamed of.
This is so wonderful. I spent a few (very cold) New Year’s Days on the beach, but Australian Christmas sounds far better.
Also, I will never stop laughing about the Ugly Christmas Rashie.
My Australian friend taught me Australian Christmas carols one year, and it was the best thing ever. I only wish I could remember more of them.
Here’s the first chorus of one of my favourites:
Christmas where the gum trees grow
There is no frost, and there is no snow.
Christmas in Australia’s hot
Cold and frosty’s what it’s not.
When the bloom of the jacaranda trees is here
Christmas time is near.
That is my favourite, and now I am in the UK and there are no jacarandas but it’s also not snowy and cold, so it feels very confusing and not any kind of Christmas at the moment
I remember being in Australia and seeing a poem in a museum that had been copied out by a schoolchild for a handwriting practice activity or similar, and it began with “January brings the snow / Makes our feet and fingers glow”. It was extremely weird in the Australian context.
To the tune of jingle bells – lets see if i remember this from a school concert/many aussie chrissies
Dashing through the bush
In a rusty holden ute
Picking up the dust
Esky in the boot.
Kelpie by my side, singing christmas songs
How fun it is to laugh and sing in a singlet shirt and thongs…
I didn’t experience snow until the age of 18. Australian Christmas sounds like my kind of party.
I am also deeply saddened that those ugly christmas rashies are sold out b/c they have KANGAROOS on them!!!
Aaaaah, this is lovely and bittersweet and wonderful to read. Thank you for this window into an experience that was totally different than my own.
I grew up in the Northern Hemisphere and I don’t get mint jelly either.
Yes to trying to explain family holiday stories to friends! My brother and I have something of a tradition where we give each other Christmas cards that are from the completely wrong holiday. It all started when he had forgotten to get a card for my cousin’s engagement party, and so decided to just pick whatever card that was in the house that had nothing to do with weddings or engagements (he chose one with a pheasant on it). We both thought it was hilarious, and so have been giving each other cards like that ever since. The best was an easter card that was converted into a Christmas card. I added Santa hats onto each easter animal’s head, and crossed every mention of Easter and wrote Christmas! on top.
From November through January of each year, downloads of Tim Minchin’s “White Wine in the Sun,” his love song to antipodean Christmas, benefit the National Autistic Society.
White Wine in the Sun is the one Christmas song I love without reservation.
I’m so looking forward to a summer Christmas this year, they really are it for me.
I just listened to it and now I feel horribly guilty about my delight over spending Christmas with just my boyfriend, rather than my parents and siblings.
What a lovely piece. Thank you. One of the reasons I don’t really celebrate Christmas now is that it doesn’t feel right in the Northern Hemisphere, even after more than a decade. Even after lots of Christmases in California, where the December weather is about the same as where I grew up. It’s not the same.
I’d give a lot to be able to swim in the sea this Friday, is what I’m saying.
It’s going to be 20C/67F here outside of Boston on Christmas Eve, so I hope some of the Australian Christmas magic floats on up to us this year.
(I realize this is not a summer temperature to Antipodean Toasties, but it sure as shit is to me!)
Honestly, it took me a long time to get past the nostalgia for a Northern Christmas I never experienced; now, in my 30s, I have finally fully embraced the salads and bbq-ed meats of my Australian Christmas. Also Christmas Pavlova, queen of the desserts.
I usually always do a pav, but am relieved of duties this year since it’s already covered by someone else. My Dad and I had a pavlova-off a few years ago and made my Nanna declare a winner…me, ahahaha!
Competitive cooking. Another great Australian Christmas tradition.
I spent Christmas in Australia once, many years ago, and it was lovely; we had ice-cold gazpacho and went to the beach, and it was all so different to all my previous Christmases. The following year I realised that I’d just stopped being excited about Christmas, because the last one had been so great.
(I do, however, intend to continue only visiting my boyfriend’s Australian family in their winter, because I am a delicate flower and Australian summers are Too Hot. Last time I went it was autumn, and the resident Australians were all horrified when my boyfriend and I went out without jumpers, despite the 15-20-degree weather.)
As a resident Australian I am horrified at the thought of going outside in 15 degrees without a jumper.
Agreed. You’ll catch your death in 15 – 20 degree weather without a jumper
Aw, this was so lovely! I love our summer Christmasses, even though you have to laugh at the way all the advertising, tv, carols etc still reference a winter Christmas that doesn’t exist here!
Going to be 37 here on Friday, but with a cool change in the evening I will definitely be waiting for!
Oh man, the cool change passage. One year my dad and I drove from Adelaide to Melbourne on Christmas Eve, and we followed the same cool change the whole way through. For us it had been raining the entire trip, but every town we stopped in it had only just started to cool down. It really is sort of magical.
I am from the US but live in South America. I get so homesick around this time of year and this year, my 6th Christmas, is no different. But! This! This article helps so much – it makes me want to really enjoy my hot Christmas and make memories to take back with me when I eventually move back north. Here’s to spending Christmas Day on the beach!
The cool change isn’t coming until Boxing Day, now. I think I’m just as excited for it as I am for Christmas Day. It’s going to be a hot one, even for us (37 degrees here in Adelaide)! This was a beautiful piece of writing that I think made me appreciate my Australian Christmases for the first time… Like lots of other Australians, I’m usually wistfully nostalgic for the white Christmas I’ve never had by this time of year.
Aaaahhh! I’m flying home to Adelaide (from London) tomorrow! I’m so excited! We’ve borrowed a beach house! We’re having seafood platter and salads! it’s going to be So Hot!
i just want to say, there are so many other Adelaide Toasties, hello!!
This being Adelaide, we all probably know each other too. Not going to test this. (Hello!)
Haha yes, best not!
Hello!
(Living in Canberra now but home in Adelaide for Christmas/New Years)
As an Australian Toastie, I was just thinking about this this morning: if Christmas and all it’s traditions had originated in Australia, and then been shipped to the Northern Hemisphere – somehow that seems like that would have been impossible to recover from. Like, frosty noses and sparkling lights in the snow and wonderful roasts and puddings and such are all so great. But if the ‘idea’ of Christmas had started with the beach and pavlova and prawns and waiting for the cool change, could a cold-weather Christmas ever really be enough?
I say that with the disclaimer that I LOATHE Australian summers, it’s like being put under house arrest by the sun for months at a time…
Happy Christmas, from another Adelaidean!
I am really surprised by all the Adelaide toasties too! Boxing day beach hangs with melty iceblocks and lots of sunscreen could be in order??
Just got in to Perth yesterday from Italy and it is boiling here and I just baked a pav and there is so much sunlight and I’m finally feeling like it’s nearly Christmas… Loved this.
*crying everywhere because I’m a Queenslander living in fucking miserable England*
may I add:
– Miss the chorus of cicadas heralding the evening
– Miss the slap of thongs on too-hot tiles
– Miss lemon lime bitters
LLB is the best, though, right? I loved the cosiness of European Christmasses, but then felt very confused when it got hot in July and there were still months until Christmas (when it felt to me like it should be just around the corner!)
It’s still and muggy in Brisvegas ATM. Off to Hervey Bay for a beach Christmas this arvo. Merry Christmas Toasties!
I’m in Australia and this still made me nostalgic! Love me a summer Christmas, melting and all.
I have spent 23 out of 27 Christmases in Florida. Ah, the feeling of spending a holiday with multiple fans in the window.
This was beautiful, thank you. Between you and White Wine in the Sun, I am longing for an Aussie Christmas. I’m a Canadian living in the UK and even though I’m going to have a brilliant one with my partner and his family, I still miss Christmas, you know?
I’m in Melbourne right now, but I’m still crying.
I’m a religious Jew living in America, yet this resonated so much!
I grew up in Adelaide reading about Chanukah in the snow – I finally have my cold Decembers now and it is SO weird!! Public menorah lightings are just not the same when it’s under 40 degrees…Love this piece:)
Another Adelaidean emerging from the woodwork here. If we’re taking a census, I’d better get in 🙂
I have to agree. I'm originally from NZ, and although Auckland isn't that much cooler than, say, Sydney in summer, it's cooler ENOUGH.
I've adjusted to around 30 being ok – 25 is much better – but the first year I was here, I had to do a 45 minute drive out to the countryside in my non-aircon'd car on New Year's Day – 42 frigging degrees. I nearly *died*. Have the windows up – die in an oven of baking sun shining through the windscreen. Have the windows down – die in the hot air blast of 1000 hairdryers set on FULL.
I lived in London for a few years, and I found the temperatures just fine in general. Also, central heating is great (this is Not Standard in NZ). But what got to me there is the lack of sunshine hours. Yes, it rains a lot in NZ, but in storms with plenty of sunny days in between. London gets 1481 sunshine hours per annum (this is actually on the lowish end of the scale for the UK – urban heat island/smog, I think), while Auckland gets 2008. That 500 more sunshine hours makes a huge difference to one's mood, if you're used to a certain level.
I think so – it's 23 right now, but will obviously creep up a bit – they've revised the forecast down to 28 tomorrow, since it rained a bit yesterday. Enjoy your trip!
I’m American, but lived in Melbourne for most of my adult life and this is my first Christmas ball in the states. I’m…not crying. Nope.
I'm late, but I'm a Queenslander living in Holland. The cicadas piping up at 6 a.m. on those heaviest days are probably the sound I miss the most, along with the maggies warbling under the hose when we rinse the car down.
Agreed. You'll catch your death in 15 – 20 degree weather without a jumper