Aussie Christmas: The joys of a hot and summery Christmas
I just love sharing the joy of seasonal celebrations, especially at this time of year when Australians and our New Zealander and Islander cousins are preparing to celebrate a summery and hot Christmas. Sadly for me, we’ve almost finished the Aussie Christmas series of articles, including:
Aussie Christmas: It’s that special time of the year! - where I share photos of my Aussie Christmas-themed decorating
Aussie Christmas: Summer celebrations of our First Nations Peoples
Aussie Christmas: The joys of a hot and summery Christmas - the one you’re reading now
Aussie Christmas: Aussie Christmas Carols - coming soon
This week let’s revel in the summery joys of a hot Australian Christmas, and explore:
Santa on a Fire Truck
Native Christmas Trees
Hay Bales and Farm Gates
Beach Christmas
Aussie Christmas Food
Santa on a Fire Truck
In country towns all across Australia, Santa arriving at community Christmas events and parades on a fire truck has become a joyful tradition. It makes sense from an aesthetic point of view as our fire trucks are bright red, they’re loud and the flashing lights add to the excitement but there’s also a deeper, more meaningful connection. December in Australia is typically hot and dry, with the threat of bushfires an ever-present spectre at this time of year. Many towns and cities have felt the devasting effects of bushfires and the state-based volunteer fire services are vital to many communities.
In my state of New South Wales, they’re called the Rural Fire Service (RFS) and in my town, they don’t just fight bushfires, they also fight structure fires, car fires, attend motor vehicle accidents, assist the SES during flood events, assist local police and ambulance and are deeply plugged into our community. My husband is an RFS fire-fighter and I can’t tell you how many times the pager and app alarms have gone off in the middle of the night (scaring the life out of me) and he has jumped out of bed to attend some kind of emergency, or he’s come home covered in soot after 16 hours battling massive bushfires in the middle of a heat wave. It’s not just time spent attending call-outs either, RFS volunteers plan, deliver and attend continuous training on weeknights and weekends as well as regular meetings and community events, all while holding down jobs and family commitments. They are heroes, every day of the year, especially during the Christmas season.
This year our local RFS not only brought Santa to the community Christmas event in a firetruck, but they took Santa on a ride around our town, mapped out and shared the routes and times, used an app so the community could monitor their progress live, and delivered little bags of lollies and Christmas wishes to the children in our community. What a magical gift for everyone in the town, thank you Bungendore RFS!
For communities that are too remote or small to have their own RFS or for those living on the big stations (huge farming properties in the outback), Santa often comes to the local pub, community hall or camp draft arena, in the back of a ‘ute,’ truck, tractor or even on horseback. The state police services have also been known to chauffeur Santa around.
I don’t like to share ads, especially not for large corporations but this brilliant ad (1:30 mins) shows what might happen if Santa were to crash on an outback station, to give some Christmas-inspired context to life on some of the remote, outback properties.
Native Christmas Trees
Before conifers from the Northern Hemisphere were imported into Australia, it was common to decorate native trees and use Australian native flowers and boughs to ‘deck the halls’. This celebration of Australian native flora is becoming more popular once again.
These days there is a lot of choice for Christmas trees. Christmas tree farms have popped up around Australia, producing traditional conifer trees for the live-cut Christmas tree market. The Albany Wooly Bush Adenanthos sericeus, is becoming a popular live native Christmas tree species and branches of Eucalyptus and wattle are used to create trees and wreaths.
A couple of years ago we splurged on a plastic tree with built-in lights (so easy to set up and take down), which we decorate with Aussie-themed ornaments for Christmas. It goes up again in July for our mid-Winter Yule celebration, decorated in Winter and Yule-themed ornaments.
Some Australian Native flora and fauna have been crowned with the ‘Christmas’ moniker. The New South Wales Christmas Bush, Ceratopetalum gummiferum, is an iconic native Australian bush that heralds the festive season with showy, sepals that turn scarlet after blooming with small white flowers in Spring. In Western Australia, the hemiparasitic tree, Nuytsia floribunda, has been nicknamed the WA Christmas Tree for its fiery show of flowers in December. The Victorian Christmas Bush, Nuytsia tasmania, can be found in coastal and sub-alpine areas, from southern Queensland to Tasmania and flowers profusely through the Christmas season.
Christmas Beetles, Anoplognathus spp., were once a ubiquitous sight across Australia during the Christmas season. These beautifully iridescent beetles, ranging from brown to bright jewel-like greens, have become increasingly hard to find, disappearing completely from some regions. The University of Sydney is asking the general public to take pictures of Christmas beetles and upload them to an app called inaturalist. I use this app frequently to identify plants and it’s good to see how the general public can help scientists and conservationists figure out what is happening with our Christmas beetle population.
The video (4:07 mins) above explains more about Christmas beetles and the Christmas Beetle Project.
Hay Bales and Farm Gates
Across Australia’s rural landscape, a new tradition has been quietly growing for the last 20 years; farmers sharing the Christmas spirit by creating huge hay bale Christmas displays in their paddocks or decorating their farm gates.
The origins of this tradition aren’t known but rural communities and homesteads in Australia can be extremely isolated due to the vast distances between properties and townships. This is one way that people connect and share some Christmas joy with passersby.
Ayla’s Christmas Wish, written by Pamela Jones and illustrated by Lucia Masciullo is a lovely children’s Christmas book we’ve added to our collection that explores the magic of hay bale Christmas decorating.
Christmas is coming and Ayla wants a snowman just like in her book, but there is no snow to be found in her drought-stricken town, not even a drop of rain. Only bales of hay.
Ayla's Christmas Wish is inspired by the small, south-west Victorian town of Tarrington, which runs a hay bale design competition each year. This book compares European Christmas traditions with the reality of a hot, dry Australian summer. Behind the story of Ayla wishing for a snowman, there is a town wishing for rain.
This story celebrates a community at Christmas-time, and highlights the importance and beauty of small-town resilience.
Beach Christmas
Australia is an island continent with vast stretches of coastline and the majority of our population lives along much of these coastal regions. Christmas at the beach is a tradition for many families, whether they live nearby or travel hours to their regular holiday homes or caravan parks. It is joyful to see caravan parks packed with holiday homes, caravans, and tents all sparkling with Christmas decorations and blloming with surfboards, fishing reels, jet skis and other fun water ‘toys’ interspersed with excited children playing and parents/grandparents watching on contentedly. Many of the popular caravan parks organise fun Christmas activities, movies and visits from Santa.
Photos below from KidSpot.com.au
Christmas at the beach is also a fun experience for backpackers and international visitors, especially the famous Bondi Beach in Sydney.
We love to visit family in Hervey Bay on the Queensland coast, every second year. Nothing beats the fun of Christmas by the beach!
Australian Christmas Food
Australia is a multicultural country and there are many ways we like to celebrate, especially when it comes to food. Families with immigrant backgrounds often prepare their favourite festive foods. However, due to the typically hot weather, the traditionally Northern Hemisphere hot Christmas meal often gives way to cooler options that require less preparation.
Many Australians celebrate their main Christmas meal at Christmas Day lunch. The festive toast is made, just a ‘cheers and Merry Christmas’ in my household, crackers are popped, paper hats worn and silly jokes are read out while prawns, ham, seafood, and charcuterie plates are served and eaten, accompanied by sides of cold salads that often include coleslaw, potato salad and other Summer vegetable concoctions.
Grazing platters of cheese, vegetables, nuts, dips and crackers often feature as entrees while seasonal fruit such as stone fruit (cherries, apricots, plums, peaches, and nectarines), berries and tropical fruit (mangoes, lychees, pineapples etc) are presented after the main meal alongside dessert. Christmas pudding is still a popular option but you can’t go wrong with a pavlova covered in whipped cream and fresh fruit or a decadent Christmas trifle.
I like to bake a Ginger Cake for Christmas Eve dessert, from an eggless ration recipe passed down from my Grandma Doris, an Australian Army cook during WWII. It is a lovely, moist and delicious-smelling cake that I also use for my Yule log cake (I celebrate Yule in July) and for my children’s Kagemand (‘Cake Man’) birthday cakes. I jazz up the recipe for the Aussie Christmas cake with an Australian bush spice mix called Oz el hanout from a local producer, Bent Shed Produce, which contains pepperberry, lemon myrtle, wattleseed, aniseed myrtle, forestberry herb, dried finger lime, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, coriander, and cumin. Baked in a bundt pan, drizzled with white lemon icing and decorated with Australian native flowers, it’s a lovely homage to my beautiful country and the hot season. Leftover cake is used in the Christmas lunch trifle.
Bluey
There’s no other show on the planet that reflects our Aussie way of life better than the gorgeous kids’ show Bluey. Two wonderful episodes were created that describe the traditions and spirit of an Aussie Christmas. Do yourselves a favour and watch them on your relevant regional streaming service.
Finally, please read this wonderful piece by Robert Skinner in The Monthly, A Beautiful Mess: When European Christmas meets Australian Suburbia. It’s a rollicking good piece of writing that captures the incongruities, the joys and the essence of our Australian Christmases.
I’d love to hear how you celebrate Christmas in your part of the world. Is Christmas Eve or Christmas lunch more important? What cultural and family Christmas traditions do you have? What food do you love to serve or eat at this time of year?
The next article will be posted on Thursday with my Aussie Christmas songs playlist full of fun, irreverent songs and a few sentimental ones, which reflect the Australian Christmas season and traditions. Stay tuned!
This was so interesting. I learned so much! I'm especially curious about that bush spice and I'm wondering if I can get it here in the U.S. 🤔 Growing up I remember watching this 1980s? movie called Christmas Down Under which I loved. It was fun imagining what it would be like celebrating a hot Christmas. We also have those decorated straw bales. Farmers typically decorate them for Halloween, but I have seen Christmas ones. We love eating cinnamon rolls for breakfast Christmas morning. Your festive lunch looks so refreshing!
Our small Virginia town sends Santa out riding on top of a fire truck on Christmas Eve! In fact, they send several Santas out on several fire trucks so that they can hit all the residential neighborhoods. Even though it's cold outside here at Christmastime, we'll leave a window cracked so that we can hear the siren that announces that he is driving toward our street!
This is an amazing series -- can't wait to see the rest!