By Danni Bain
Chrissy Cheer I feel jibbed. And Bing Crosby is to blame.
fire while it snows outside.
Him and the white Christmases he bragged about in verse; sleigh bells, snowmen, north pointing poles and other homages to pretty much anything reflective of the northern hemisphere throughout December.
I’m not saying we Australians haven’t made our own traditions, some of them quite nice. I’ll be the first to pull out the Havaianas and fire up the barbie with one hand whilst sipping some punch-packing alcohol concoction my aunty hands out like water on Christmas Day, out of the other.
For us Australia-dwelling folk who find ourselves sitting, soaking, in our own bodily fluids because it’s hotter here than a mincepie fresh out of the oven, it’s not so easy to harness this ‘magic of Christmas’ that we hear about. No matter what customs we ‘borrow’ and adapt to our sunburned nation –egg-nog, carols, National Lampoon’s annual tales of fails, tree-decorating whilst swooning to Frank Sinatra convincing us he will be home for Christmas (more lies)– somewhere along the way I’ve discovered we have to work a lot harder to make Christmas happen here in December. Forgive me if BBQ sausage rotation duties, and striking that perfect balance of sand and chafe between the legs aren’t enough to get me feeling so seasonally whimsical as say, walking down fairy-light-lit streets, making snow angels and snuggling a loved one near a
However every time I watch bloody Love Actually I am overcome by the urge to visit lastminute.com.au to buy me a ticket out of this sweatbox and into the sweet embrace of London winter…or New York… Paris…. anywhere that guarantees legitimate winter wonderland. Of course, before actualization, I realize that’s a terrible idea and the amount of money I have is less than equal to the amount of money required for even the cab ride to the airport. So I channel Banksy and graffiti my windows with white spray paint instead, which is supposed to make it look like it just snowed. Which is ironic when you have to walk around naked because even bikinis induce mild heat stroke. (Not even being dramatic). I’ve contemplated waging a strike for a date change for the Aussie Christmas, circa July
sometime. That would work; we’re all a lot less busy that time of the year too. It won’t fix the snow issue, but we’ll have time to work that one through. It sure would seem magical to have Christmastime associated with things other than extreme heat, flies, and the need to hitch your maxi-dress up well and good into your underwear to get anywhere. Can ‘love actually be all around’ when we all smell of RID, the dish of the season is a shish kebab, it’s acceptable to sport Bintang wife-beaters at any occasion and everyone is alarmingly ever-ready for a game of beach cricket? Actually, that said I kind of dig our Christmases as unconventional as they are. Sure we’ll never have Jimmy Stewart or even Tim Allen star in a film adaptation of them, but they’re uniquely ours, representative of us as Australians – laid back, up for some fun, and a little bit alcoholic. I’ll give the Aussie Christmas another go, and if that fails I can always head to an airport where everyone is blissfully in love, or so Hugh Grant tells me. Make Merry well.
www.biscuitmagazine.com.au
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