Australian Christmas questions

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21

Yes. We have Christmas trees, fairy lights, decorations. We have Christmas lights competitions.
My family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve. When the kids were little they would go to there fathers on Christmas Day , they would be gone 2 weeks so it was easier to celebrate Christmas Eve, also cooler at night. Kids are all adults now , some with partners so we have dinner. We start with , cheeses, deli meats, crackers , dips, charcuterie. Cold Chicken, Ham, potato salad, coleslaw, every salad combination you can think of. There’s often dessert , pavlova, cheese cake, but we’re usually too full to eat it.

Christmas Day I usually sleep in then sack out in front of the tv with a coffee of cold drink, eat junk ( chocolate, chips & salsa etc) & watch a stream of stupid Christmas movies, then eat leftovers for dinner for the next week.

22

British, have been in Australia 18years.

I have 13yo and 11yo kids. Alternate with ex where the kids sleep Christmas Eve.

We have a tree and decorations. I know people who do themes but I’ve built my decorations up over a lifetime, some bought on overseas holidays, some sent by friends and family in different countries, some made by my kids and a couple from my mum’s tree in England from a set I bought her in the 90s.

If the kids are at mine the night before we put milk and a mince pie out for Santa, and hang a (fake) ornamental key outside so he can get in (no chimney).

Christmas Day we go to my cousin’s for lunch, lots of family including my Aunt will be there. They have a pool so we’ll have a dip in the afternoon before coming home (or the kids will go to their dad). Some years we’ll have the full roast dinner and sometimes it’s cold meats, salads, potato salads etc but we all have to bring something - ie I’ll bring a ham and a cheesecake. The shops are full of Christmas puddings but nobody in our family likes it - too stodgy to eat in the middle of summer. Table is decorated and we have Xmas crackers.

Now I have a partner who also has kids and they have a similar situation so at some point I will see him.

Boxing Day, family and friends party. Same cousin’s house. People come and go all day. A lot more relaxed. Lots of drinking and eating leftovers, crackers, dips, cheese etc.

We do watch Christmas movies and listen to Christmas songs. In the lead up we’ll go to a carol concert, visit the city to see the lights, drive around the neighbourhood to see who’s decorated the front of their house, we go to the ballet every year too, the best years are when the Nutcracker is on, and when the kids were younger we did Santa pics.

I try to make it as Christmassy as possible for the kids but as someone who didn’t move here til I was in my 30s, it never feels like Christmas to me. It’s supposed to be winter! I’ve taken the kids back there for Christmas before and will again, so they can experience the UK traditions and the family ones that my siblings do with their kids.

Always an emotional time of year - the rose-tinted glasses are on and I feel quite homesick.

Regarding celebrating in winter - Christmas in July is a “thing” here but I’ve never participated. That seems a bit weird to me because it’s not about the weather and the meal on that one day, it’s the whole thing - the dark nights with the decorations lighting up the city, getting dressed up for the parties, family having time off work and being able to be with them, pantomime, music. Going to a hotel or pub, having turkey and mince pies surrounded by tinsel, then leaving two hours later and it’s all over - weird and meh!

We spend a lot of time at the beach over the holidays and no it doesn’t get crowded (maybe the car parks at the most popular ones) because we have a lot of beach to choose from here in Perth!

Finally school holidays - they started this week and kids go back to school at the beginning of Feb. Usually six weeks off but this year it’s seven. So about the same as the UK summer holiday.

New school year (term 1) starts in Feb, not September. There are four terms (two semesters) instead of three terms. Each term is ten weeks. Two weeks off in April, July and Sep/Oct. No half-term breaks.

23

Christmas day in my family is hanging out in the backyard with some music going, bowl of chocolates on the table, cold meat and salad for lunch, sometimes prawns, and dessert is usually pavlova (fluffy meringue with whipped cream and fruit) and other cream cakes, sometimes a fruit cake or chrismas pudding but usually no one eats those.

Some shops do a Christmas in July type of sale, but not really.

My Christmas tree is made of plastic and decorated with baubles and coloured lights. I don’t like tinsel.

I watch some Christmas movies, but I don’t enjoy the hallmark ones. American movies doing Christmas in winter is not weird. I do personally find snowflake and snowman decorations to be a bit tacky, but some people like them. I do have a few snowflake decorations on my tree that I keep because they were crocheted for me by someone I care about.

I don’t really pay attention to internet trends most of the time.

Halloween is not really a thing in Australia. I know a few people that like to do dress up parties around that time because it’s fun to dress up. Some people try to do trick or treating, but it’s very small and most people aren’t into it.

The sun makes me feel hot.

Australia is considered a western country, so I’m not sure what about western culture is supposed to be different.

I have never been to the beach on Christmas. I tend to avoid it from December - January in general because of the tourists.

24

  1. Food & family. Seafood & cold meats mainly for my family. Plenty persist with traditional Christmas roasts, but that’s silly IMO. As a kid there’d be a neighbourhood game of cricket at the school oval. Now, lazing in the pool is more likely.

  2. No.

  3. Yes. Have never done a “real” tree though… plastic all the way.

  4. Only if there’s nothing else to do while recovering from a food coma. We understand that Christmas is in winter for the northern hemisphere… it would be weird if an Australian Christmas movie was set in Australia with snow drifts.

  5. What?

  6. Don’t celebrate Halloween.

  7. Warmer months mean holidays are coming… beach, long days & Christmas.

  8. No. Winter ≠ Christmas & Christmas ≠ winter. They are two separate things. Christmas borrows a lot from the northern winter, but it’s a date on the calendar not a pagan fertility festival anymore.

  9. It’s summer. People are on holidays. When do you think beaches get crowded? Midnight in winter?

25

What’s an average Christmas day look like?

A: lunch, swim, cricket (backyard and boxing day test) and a snooze.

Do you partake in any kinda of Christmas things during winter?

A: Christmas in July is pretty popular.

Do you still have a Christmas tree and do you decorate for Christmas the same way or do you have like special summer Christmas decorations?

A: Definitely have a traditional tree, there are Xmas tree farms to get real trees too.
There are a pretty even split of traditional winter decorations and (what I think are stupid) Aussie Christmas decorations like a kangaroo with reindeer ears etc.

Do you still watch Christmas movies and is it weird for you that they’re all snowy/set in winter?

A: Of course it’s not weird, I watch movies all year and there are all sorts of weather in them? Is it weird when you watch movies with different weather than you’re experiencing??

Is it weird for you when it feels like the Internet is celebrating something such as a brat summer or smth during the winter?

A: It’s as weird for me to celebrate Christmas in summer as it is for you to celebrate in winter. The Internet IS celebrating Christmas in summer because my feed and algorithm is designed to match my life

Do you celebrate Halloween the same?

A: I love Halloween but from what I’ve seen in American films, we don’t celebrate it with the same intensity

Does the sun make you feel Christmassy?

A: yes it does. Bushfire smell excited me for the holiday season

Could Western culture influence you enough to make you feel Christmassy during the winter?

A: could Western culture influence YOU to feel Christmasy in summer?

I’ve heard that people go to the beach on Christmas, does it not get super crowded?

A: there are something like over 200 beaches in Australia and not every single person goes to the beach but some beaches do get crowded, just like every beach gets crowded on nice days.

26

Xmas day - family, friends and food. I actually live rural so I dress up as an elf and my neighbour as Santa and Xmas morning we go around the streets on a horse and carriage giving lollies to the kids.

I do not celebrate Xmas in July. One Xmas a year is enough.

We have a Christmas tree that we decorate. Baubles, tinsel, a star on top. And a few special decorations that we each have that are more specific to movies or plays than summer.

Yes we watch Xmas movies. Doesn’t really bother us that they’re set in snow as we know it snows in places at Xmas. Don’t think about it tbh.

Halloween isn’t as big, but it’s growing. We usually take a walk around our nearest town and see everyone dressed up.

Yes, when it starts heating up we feel like Christmas is coming.

No, I don’t think I’ll celebrate in winter (as I said, once a year is enough).

I don’t go to the beach at Xmas as I live a distance away from it. But we always jump in the pool at some point on Xmas day.

Our school year goes from Feb to Dec. it gets broken up into 4 terms of about 10 weeks each with a 2 week break between. Our summer holidays are about 6 weeks long. They start mid to late December and end when school returns beginning of February.

27

Lots of people have a Christmas in July celebration despite no snow in most parts of Australia.

School year runs from late January to mid December giving a 7 to 8 week holiday.

Most people have a Christmas tree.

Lots of people have Christmas lights. Lobethal used to be famous for their Christmas display.

Even in.40 degrees Celsius, some Australians will enjoy a hot Turkey roast meal with Ham and chicken.

Other Australians will go to the beach or park. Some may enjoy prawns and Ham or a cold turkey roast.

Australians celebrate in many different ways

28

No tree or decorations.

I go out of my way to be at work ( FIFO miner ) it gets called the silly season for good reasons.

29

Average Christmas Day:
Wait until the rest of the family/guests arrive, snack a little. Open gifts. Cook lunch. Eat lunch. Sleep, investigate gifts. Kids might have a water fight if it’s hot (usually). Maybe on to the next house if there’s more than one place to go to. Eat a ham sandwich for dinner.

Christmas things during winter:
Sometimes people do ‘Christmas in July’ as an excuse to do some of those more northern hemisphere things, but it’s generally not actually that cold anyway. Just less hot.

Do we have a Christmas tree?
Yes, currently ours is a plastic tree which we decorate with strings of fairy lights and a rather large collection of varied glass ornaments. We put it up around 1 December, take it down around New Year. Our tree has a lot of bird ornaments including Australian birds like an emu and a fairy wren, or a rubber duck wearing a Geelong Cats (AFL team) jersey.

Christmas movies: personally I dislike them but will sometimes watch Home Alone for childhood nostalgia, or Love Actually for early 2000’s cringe. When I was a kid it was confusing with the snow, but I learned about the hemispheres and the influence of northern countries, it made sense so I rolled with it.

Halloween: the same as what? It wasn’t a thing when I was a kid, first time I saw people trick-or-treating I was 14 (they would have been more like 20?). It’s a bit bigger now, as we love an excuse for a party and getting dressed up. But it’s still mostly just kids dressing in store-brought superhero costumes or teenagers wearing tiny dresses/shorts and devil horns etc.

Sun for Christmasy: not sure what you mean? The weather feels like summer and summer is Christmas time so I guess so. But it’s also bushfire or cyclone time. So that is something in the back of the mind.

Northern hemisphere influence on me to feel christmasy in winter: only if I’d lived there for a few years.

Beach: Hell no. Beach is hot, sand, salt, crowds. No thanks. Give me a river or a lake, or a back-yard pool, though…

School holidays: summer holidays are indeed longer 6-8 weeks, we get 1-2 weeks off at Easter, 2 weeks in June/July, and 2 weeks in September. School years start in January, so if last year you finished year 7 in December, you’ll start year 8 in January.

30

Are your summer holidays longer than winter holidays in terms of like the school holidays and does that mean that there’s less of a gap in between school years?

Our summer holidays are longer than our winter ones, but our school year is late Jan/Early Feb to early December so the longest gap is still between school years

31

We just celebrate however we want to. It’s always been hot at Christmas so we don’t even think about half of that. No. I don’t care what goes on in the northern hemisphere. Why should I? I’ve always lived in the Southern hemisphere. Your seasons are the months they are and ours are the months ours are.

Christmas is Dec25th and it’s summer and it always has been…so ???

Yes, we have our big summer school holidays from December to February. Our school year runs Feb to November.

I’ve never watched Christmas movies. Not really a thing in my social circle or family that I have known.

Christmas trees are Christmas trees! You hang pretty baubles and put lights on them and light them up. What would be special “summer” decorations exactly???

If you live near a beach or are visiting the coast over Christmas, yes, you might go to the beach if the weather is for it. Australia has thousands upon thousands of kms of gorgeous beaches. Whenever i’ve been at the beach over Christmas it’s not particularly crowded. Just the usual summer people. Plenty of room for us all.

The whole world doesn’t march to the beat of the USA drum you know? We are all seperate to the USA and have our own ways of living and doing things. The USA is only ONE country in the whole world.

32

I have wonderful fond memories of when I was a kid. We lived in the bush and always on Boxing Day we would go to our cousins property about 50kms away. They had a pool! A proper pool next to their house! We’d all sit out around the pool. They had a big beautiful shady lawn area. we’d play cricket, swim in the pool and eat left over food…was wonderful.

33

I was just talking to a cashier at Coles as this is my second Christmas in Queensland. We were laughing about how weird it is for me seeing Santa in a beach swim suit. And it’s so hot and everyone back home is complaining about how cold it is.

Or how ill never probably have hot chocolate in December again lol.

It’s only weird when uve lived 3 decades in a completely different hemisphere. You don’t really think about it until you live in the opposite

34

  1. depends on the family. It’s a bit of a choose your own adventure.

  2. sometimes we have ‘Christmas in July’ but it’s not as popular as it was for a little while there

  3. yes, regular winter themed tree

  4. yes, and no, we’re used to it.

4)Halloween isn’t as big, some places will do kid trick or treating and some houses decorate.

  1. not really, it’s summer for the usual amount of months

  2. no

  3. depends on the beach. The city ones are crowded anyway

  4. bonus question: our summer holidays is still the longest for school, and the school year starts with the calendar year.

35

I’ve lived in both the UK and Australia. Christmas is, effectively, the same. We’ve got a Christmas tree, we wake up, have presents, and far too much to eat at a gathering with family. We’ll watch Christmas movies too.

The weather does change what we do - on Christmas Day morning we generally go to the beach for a couple of hours, and for the afternoon we have lunch/dinner and everyone brings something rather than the person hosting it making a giant roast dinner, but that’s more or less the only differences in what we do.

It’s warmer, it’s generally not pissing down with rain.

36

We don’t live in a bubble. We understand that Christmas is cold in the Northern Hemisphere. We know it doesn’t really make sense to have snow themed decorations in the middle of summer. And singing Jingle Bells etc. But somehow, we just separate the theme of Christmas with the weather.

But let me tell you, it’s really nice. Christmas mixed with nice cold beers, cicadas, backyard cricket, late night walks in shorts and T-shirts to look at all the lights. It’s an absolute delight. To us, that’s what feel’s Christmassy. We don’t feel we’re missing out because we have our own Christmas culture.

As for long school holidays in Summer. Yes that’s correct. But our school years are the same as the calendar years. Our kids start the school year on February and finish in December. The holidays in the middle of the year are two weeks. This is the middle of the school year.

37

The school year starts in late January / early February :slight_smile:

38

As an Aussie living in Canada, a cold snowy Christmas is quite frankly weird. A 40 degree day is much more Christmassy to me. We never spent it at the beach as frankly it was too hot. Our winters are middle of the year and wet. And as stated cold does not equate with feelings of Christmas so never crossed our mind to do Christmas in July. Movies and cards and decorations are the same as the northern hemisphere and growing up with these never thought it was different or odd. Never celebrated Halloween till I lived here, it’s super fun and I love it but if we had kids come to the door at home they’d be out of luck and we’d think they’re lame, should buy their own chocolates and it’s not an Australian thing.

39
  1. wake up 8am, coffee, christmas music, presents, brekkie, head to beach for a swim, come home, shower, get ready for christmas lunch, start drinking champagne, cook/serve lunch, eat, clean, keep drinking all afternoon until we feel ready for dessert lol
  2. no we do not do anything in the winter for christmas as it’s july hahah
  3. yes we still have a normal tree and decorations (some have aussie decorations with aussie animals, a surfing santa, etc)
  4. i wouldn’t say it’s tradition to watch lots of movies during christmas time, as it’s summer most of us are enjoying the outdoors, not sat inside. but, it’s still normal for us to watch them on occasion and no it’s not weird
  5. halloween isn’t very widely celebrated in australia, but it gets bigger each year
  6. I don’t know how to answer this lol!
  7. no i don’t think i could ever feel christmassy during winter, as we’re all used to it being summer during christmas
  8. yes the beach definitely gets crowded depending on where you live
  9. school starts in february, for 10ish weeks, then there’s a 2 week break, around march/april (autumn holidays), then another 10ish weeks of school, then another 2 week break around june/july (winter holidays), then another 10ish weeks of school, and a 2 week break around september/october. then 10 weeks of school, and in mid december we go on school holidays for 6/7 weeks until the end of january.

also we eat a lot of cold food on christmas such as ham, seafood, salads… etc

these were so fun to answer, hope i gave you some insight!!

40

The basics are similar to a northern hemisphere Christmas but I hear a lot about traditions involving watching movies or playing games like charades after Christmas lunch because it’s cold and dark so everyone is trapped inside together. In Australia it’s far more common to do something outside after the formal traditions like opening presents and a big lunch. Things like play a game of cricket or go for a swim if you have a pool. When I was a kid my family developed a tradition of a boxing day water fight (a new water gun of some sort was likely to be in your stocking) because December is typically warm but not unbearably hot (though that is becoming less and less true in recent years) it’s a good time to get outside. January we will have a lot more unbearably hot days which trap you inside.