I cannot express how difficult it is to get in the Christmas spirit in Australia. Every day this month we’ve neared 100 degrees, and the thought of sitting by the fire sounds more like suicide than coziness.
And it doesn’t help that no one here really gets into the holiday. In America, Christmas is basically a lifestyle. Instead of being in a category with Easter and the Fourth of July, I’ve always felt like it more falls in with Summer, Spring, Fall and Winter. But here in Australia, Christmas is more like an afterthought; kind of how we would recognize Valentine’s Day or St. Patrick’s Day. Or Memorial Day.
And yes, I did flip through every single radio station, and get this: NONE of them have changed their music to a continuous stream of Christmas songs. None. Although maybe that’s for the best, since most songs don’t really make sense considering it’s summer time. Frosty the Snowman clearly wouldn’t survive longer than five minutes here before melting and dissolving. Although the weather outside is certainly frightful, a fire sounds less than delightful. Jack Frost is going nowhere near my nose, and folks are DEFINITELY not dressed up like eskimos.
There’s no egg nog, no tacky light tours, no crazed shoppers elbowing through each other at the mall. They don’t even have Salvation Army bell ringers on every corner. And since growing a pine tree on this continent is like trying to grow a palm tree in the North Pole, no one has real Christmas trees. Of the 2.5% that actually go through the trouble of putting up a tree, all of them are completely artificial.
On the upside, we’ve finally started decorating the house. On the downside, this is an Australian family’s idea of Christmas decorations:
And FYI, Santa does NOT have an Australian accent. So I don’t know who that poser at the mall was, but from my years of experience sitting on his lap and seeing him in Christmas movies, Santa has never once said, “What would you like for Christmas, mate?”
sheilafromthestates 