Useful Notes / Christmas in Australia

A typical Australian Christmas.

"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 on the Jacaranda tree is here,
Christmas time is near."

— "Christmas Where the Gum Trees Grow", Australian Christmas carol

Christmas in Australia tends to be similar to Christmas in Britain, with a few necessary changes.

Most notably, it's hot. Very hot. Depending on locale, the temperature ranges from warmish, to sort of hot, to blood-boilingly-tarmac-melting-railroad-warping-surface-of-the-sun hot (and it's also very humid). ^note We're not exaggerating about the railway thing. This actually happens. This is because Australia is located in the Southern Hemisphere, where, due to the planet's tilt, the seasons are the opposite to the Northern Hemisphere — in December, it's summer. It's also split between the tropical and sub-tropical latitudes, further ensuring that it will be hot no matter the time of year.

As a result, later Christmas activities can involve going to the beach, assuming a) you live near a beach (which most do, with a generous idea of 'near'), and b) you're south of the Tropic of Capricorn — most of the more notorious Australian sea life are found north of that line, and they are not a laughing matter. If your family owns a pool, odds are most of Christmas Day will be spent in it, with short breaks for lunch/dinner.

If there's one thing Australians have perfected to a fine art, it's Christmas lights. Spend some time looking around any suburb of any capital city during the Christmas season. Stunning arrays of Christmas lights will ensue, and every house will at the very least make a halfhearted attempt at joining in (In Melbourne, The Boulevard in Ivanhoe is famous city-wide (at least) for its elaborate Christmas displays). It probably helps that the hotter weather is slightly more conducive to setting the things up to begin with and making touring streets a fairly pleasant prospect; achieving either probably isn't as easy when there's snow everywhere and it's freezing. ^note Sadly in many rural areas this is slowly disappearing as electricity bills increase - while many can and still do set up Christmas lights, the time when whole streets would try to outdo each other and Christmas parties would be held on the street for everyone to share has almost completely disappeared.

The weather often results in prolonged Christmas/New Year bushfires, especially down south. Up north it's also the wet season, making the fires less common despite the higher temperatures. There are some exceptions. In 2006, freak weather conditions resulted in up to 30 cm of snow falling in some mountainous areas of Victoria and New South Wales on Christmas Day. In 2011, some parts of Melbourne also witnessed a white Christmas of sorts due to severe hailstorms.

In New Zealand, Christmas celebrations are similarly a summer affair, with the addition of some native Maori customs.

Other key differences that distinguish Australian Christmas:

Traditions

• Some Australian Christmas cards depict Santa using waterskis instead of a sleigh. If he does use a sleigh, it may be pulled by white kangaroos (as introduced in fairly popular Christmas carol Six White Boomers) instead of reindeer.
  • Of course, most of the traditional Christmas imagery still remains, and Aussies will gladly sing carols about snow and give each other cards depicting winter landscapes without a shred of irony; actually, the standard winter imagery is significantly more common, both in the selling of the goods and in actual practice, and Australianisations tend to invoke cases of Cultural Cringe.
• "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Christmas" are almost always used, "Happy Holidays" is quite rare.
  • You will hear "The Holiday Season" mentioned with frequency, but this refers more to how many people and business close just before Christmas and re-open just after New Year's Day, given there are three public holidays (Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Day) is the space of a week.
• The tree is usually a fake one since pine trees aren't native here and nobody likes having a gum tree in their living room. However, if you grew up near a pine plantation,^note Pines are commercially grown for wood pulp to make paper and suchlike, and most of the capital cities have dedicated "Christmas tree farms" located nearby then it's more likely that you use a real tree. In some areas, Casuarina trees—evergreens that, for lack of a better way of describing them, look like oak trees that have decided they'd prefer being pines^note They're closely related to the beech family, which includes oaks, but have needle-like leaves and their fruits are woody globes that could easily be confused for pine cones—are used. ^note That won't surprise Americans, who call Casuarinas "Australian pine", but Australians call them "she-oak".
• Melbourne has a couple of its own traditions: the Myer Christmas windows, an elaborate display in the front of department store Myer in Bourke Street, and the Boxing Day Test, a Cricket match that begins on December 26th.
  • Sydney has the same, except it's the David Jones window on Elizabeth St, and the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.
    • The David Jones in the Adelaide CBD has the 'Magic Cave' every year
    • Belmont North, a suburb in NSW, used to have 'Gracelands', where a large house was turned into a walk-through display every year. It was quite the spectacle until a few years ago, when the owner passed away.
• Some of the state's capital cities have a Christmas pageant, an event that happens a couple of weeks before Christmas and largely consists of a parade with various Christmas/fairytale/pirate/whatever floats trundling down the main street of the CBD that's been closed off for the day.
  • The biggest of these is in Adelaide, which is also the second-biggest Christmas pageant in the world (following only Macy's in the United States). From 1996 until 2018, it was called the Credit Union Christmas Pageant. From 2019 onwards, it is called the National Pharmacies Christmas Pageant and is expected to be given a retool.
• In most of the larger cities, arthouse and repertory cinemas will screen Monty Python's Life of Brian on either Christmas Eve or Boxing Day (but never on the day itself).
• Don't forget Carols by Candlelight! One such event is held is almost every city in the lead-up to Christmas, but the original (and the best) is the one held in Melbourne. The Nine Network traditionally broadcasts the Melbourne carols, which have been hosted by journalist Ray Martin for nearly twenty years; neighbouring countries including New Zealand also get the broadcast of the Melbourne event for some reason.
  • This also has an example of Large Ham. John Foreman (composer, songwriter and also the guy who would set up the live bands for shows like Dancing with the Stars or Australian Idol) often conducts the orchestra, but for the Hallelujah chorus, he hands the reins over to someone else. He will then proceed to take the cymbals and does something with them while he's waiting for his big moment at the finale. In the last couple of years, this has included him walking around the entire park, standing up on stage and standing in the pit, all with the hammiest grin on his face. You can tell he has an absolute BLAST wit this song.
  • The Melbourne carols are always hosted on the evening of Christmas Eve, and always end with the entire cast singing a medley that begins and ends with "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" as the credits roll.
  • Carols in the Domain is Sydney's answer to that show. Famous for having The Wiggles (whom, after their debut in 1993, only missed the 2011 carols) and Delta Goodrem on them.
  • The carols in Adelaide are well-known for its spectacular fireworks display, especially since the mid-2010s when the Torrens footbridge and Adelaide Oval, two well-known landmarks, are involved. Since 2016, former Wiggle Sam Moran has been a feature of the carols.

Christmas Dinner

• The Christmas meal will be either an English dinner with turkey and everything or an Australian barbecue with steak and sausages and ice cream. In New South Wales and Queensland, it usually also involves seafood, particularly prawns. ^note As has been mentioned elsewhere — yes, prawns on the barbie. NOT "shrimp".
• Mangoes are often eaten as a Christmas food, and crates of them are sometimes given as gifts.
  • Cherries are also very popular at Christmas. When the first tray of the season is made, it is auctioned off for a large amount of money.

Christmas Television

• The commercial networks don't generally air Christmas-themed television episodes because it's the summer non-ratings period, meaning that they only get to the Christmas-themed episodes of American sitcoms around May. However, they can and have been made, the season finale of Blue Heelers for example, as well an early Round the Twist episode and a few from Home and Away (which runs all year). The Wiggles and Hi-5 have multiple Christmas episodes, and franchises like Blinky Bill, Bananas in Pyjamas, and Jellabies have seen their own Christmas specials. Some of the few one-off domestic Christmas specials include Candy Claus, Santa's Apprentice, Scrooge Koala's Christmas, Silent Night, Holy Night, Around The World With Dot, and A Very Barry Christmas.
  • The ABC airs quite a lot of Christmas-themed stuff, including the Doctor Who Christmas special, while Christmas movies also air as ubiquitously as anywhere else.
• SBS will play a Hayao Miyazaki film on Christmas Day at around 8pm.
  • Similarly, they always play Dinner for One on New Years Eve.
    • The Seven Network must devote half their primetime schedule to The Vicar of Dibley repeats for a week before Christmas.^note Despite what was mentioned a few points above, these repeats always include at least one Christmas Episode, usually aired on Christmas Eve.
    • Network Ten on most years will air Monty Python's The Meaning of Life on Christmas Eve.

Fun, Frolics and Family

• It's also a tradition to play cricket when your family is over, usually by using a plastic cricket set or substituting with something like wheelie bins and a bat. Similarly, there's beach cricket, transposing cricket to a beach setting with all the fun of trying to run around on deep sand; in which case, a boogie board generally serves as the wickets if none are available.
  • There are also all kinds of house rules, such as Tippy Go^note or Tippity, Tip-and-run, Tip-hit, Hit and run, Tipsy, Tipneys, One Tip depending on the state where the batsman has to run when they hit the ball even if they just hit the tip. Common additions include Six and Out, where hard to field areas such as the roof or the water when at the beach are worth 6 runs and an automatic, and Can't get out first ball, for when younger and less coordinated players are in the family. The Other Wiki has a bigger list here.

Boxing Day

• As was previously mentioned, December 26th, AKA Boxing Day, is the time for sporting events: the Sydney-to-Hobart Yacht Race or the Boxing Day Test Match cricket are the two biggest. This is probably because after the clamour and excitement of Christmas Day, it dawns on everybody that it's still the middle of a really hot summer, so most people just want to sit around watching sport. (For people actually in the Sydney area, watching the Hobart Race start live can also be combined with a day at the beach or out on the water in the spectator fleet.)
  • For the same reasons of "we want to sit in an air-conditioned cinema and be entertained", a lot of movies get released on Boxing Day in Australia. They're usually fantasy, science fiction, or in some manner fantastical, although there's usually a comedy in there as well. All three installments of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Eragon, Frozen (2013), The Adventures of Tintin (2011), The Transformers: The Movie and plenty of others came out that day.
  • South Australia technically does not celebrate Boxing Day on the 26th, but Proclamation Day; this marks the day that the state government officially came into being and that the land that would become South Australia became an official British province. This technically occurred on 28th December 1836, and used to be celebrated on that day, but the day was changed to the 26th to bring it in line with the other states, who celebrate the day as Boxing Day. In practical terms, however, there's no specific Proclamation Day celebrations nor any real difference between how a South Australian spends December 26th and how other Australians do.

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Australian Christmas in Media

Film

• Bush Christmas (1947), a family movie in which some rancher's children wind up chasing horse thieves.

Live Action Television

• A Moody Christmas (2012), a limited series spanning 6 Christmases involving the titular Moody family as they deal with the frustations of each year bringing little in the way of change. Got a spinoff called The Moodys.

Music

• Tim Minchin's Christmas song "White Wine in the Sun" doesn't directly namedrop Australia, but Minchin himself is Australian, and the titular image of "drinking white wine in the sun" to celebrate Christmas very much invokes the idea.
• Hi-5's song "Santa Wear Your Shorts" describes what Christmas Day is like from the perspective of an Australian family, and has since become a favourite at Aussie carol concerts.

Video Games

• Team Fortress 2 had this as a tradition in 2010 and 2011. It was later renamed to "Smissmas".

Western Animation

• Bluey has two Christmas episodes:
  • "Verandah Santa" from Season One takes place on Christmas Eve. The Heeler kids and Bandit play the titular game and Bluey must learn a lesson on forgiveness when Socks accidentally bites her.
  • "Christmas Swim" from Season Two takes place on the day itself and spotlights various traditions from a pool party to prawns as part of the dinner.

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