One of my peripheral de facto parenting duties over the festive season seems to involve lots of slamming on of the car brakes and doing U-turns back into side streets so my 11-year-old daughter can look at Christmas decorations on houses she's seen out of the corner of her eye.
On a drive to see some friends in a leafy northern suburb of Sydney a few Sundays back, she was as alert to this as ever and spotted another, her third of the day. She seemed a bit more gleefully excited than usual, though, and yelled: "There Dad ... that one. Stop. It's got SNOW.'"
Well, it kind of had snow. Considering the temperature outside was in the mid-30s (Celsius, that is), a real covering of the white stuff wouldn't have had a snow flake's chance in hell of lasting more than 3.5 seconds before it ended up down the stormwater drain on its way to the Pacific.
So we stopped, with the air conditioning still going, and peered out the window into the shimmering heat haze. An electrician's van parked in the driveway told the story: a plethora of Christmassy lights was strung up around the place, almost covering the roof and eaves, but alas, switched off, they just looked gaudy in the midday sun. The kids' bikes lay idle in the shade near the doorway.
A giant outline of a Santa with a raised arm sat in a sleigh on the roof and seemed to be squinting at the sun. On the front lawn there were elves, a nativity scene, and a host of other plastic Christmas decorations, including the only one with a nod to where we were: a suntanned Santa with white zinc cream on his nose, a surfboard under his arm, and wearing just a hat and red, white-trimmed boardshorts ("Looks like you, Dad''). Along the side of the house, on a sandstone wall shaded by eucalypts, there was a carpet of white. When I say carpet, I actually mean carpet - or to be more precise, a long piece of white felt cut along the bottom into triangular shapes so that fake icicles were dripping down the wall.
On the kind of day when most sane people stay inside air conditioned houses or immerse themselves in cool water at the pool or the beach, I did as ordered and stepped from the car. The air temperature when you do this always feels like a furnace. We stood there in the heat, listening to the silence of the bush, broken by the buzzing of summer insects, and drinking in this glorious scene: a testament to our inability to let go any vestige of our European heritage.
Article comments
1 - Nancy
Christmas shouldn't be geared to trying to reproduce no. hemisphere conditions. It doubtless is just as nice in the warm tropical conditions of Hawaii or Kilimanjaro as in the snowy confines of Norway, Alaska, or Buffalo, NY. Besides, songs like "White Christmas" should be banned as tasteless schlock anyway. Inhabitants of Oz, start your OWN Christmas traditions more appropriate & enjoyable to your unique & wonderful Down Underness & all the gorgeous people therein.
2 - S.T.M
Thanks Nancy ... you are right. We have tried over the years to make it unique but I guess our Anglo/Celtic heritage always wins out in the end, and a fair proportion of the population still opts for the full, hot Christmas lunch with all the trimmings. Others will have a barbecue, but it can be quite funny listening to tourists from the northern hemisphere complaing that it "doesn't feel like Christmas".
I guess it's what you make it, though. I have a friend in the US who, while often stuck inside away from the cold or the snow, tells me he wishes he could have Christmas at the beach - which inidentally is what many young tourists do.
Bondi beach is packed on Christmas Day with young backpapckers from Europe and North America, all in boardies and bikinis and santa hats, enjoying a picnic lunch at the beach.
Me, I'd like to have one more Christmas in the snow just to satisfy a hankering from my childhood. I plan to take the family to Canada one year so that we can.
3 - Dawn
I wish there were a way to make Christmas decorations look as nifty during the day as they do at night.
A little Christmas magic might do the trick.
4 - nancy
Lots of pretty lights at night look good no matter where you are or what season it is; and they all look like crap during the day, ditto, unless you get the kind disguised as plastic flowers, which is almost as bad.
Yeah, the dominant culture memory of most Ozzies is northern european, and even after 150 years it's hard to shake the traditions of roast beast & plum pudding & Tiny Tim & all that from back in Merrie Olde Englande - even if they DID deport all your ancestors forcibly in floating coffins, just like (for a shorter time) they did ours in the US of A.
I personally enjoy breaking tradition: I was very thankful at Thanksgiving that I was NOT eating the ubiquitous turkey, but had access to Chinese instead, and I'll weep no tears if I end up spending some Christmas or New Year's on a beach in Hawaii with a platter of sushi.
Most of the problem is (I've thought about this for a long, long time), 99.99% of us around the world have been brainwashed by congenital marketing & advertising to believe that certain scenarios & standards are de rigeur for the holidays - which is essential if these same marketers are to maintain the cultural expectations which provide the entire impetus for the whole exercise: mainly to drum up business & drive people into a consumer frenzy in the NAME of bogus, contrived images of so-called hearth & home which in fact never existed for most of us except in a stupid blowsy Dickins novel & tacky badly-drawn Currier & Ives prints, which were just as contrived then as they are now, as what we SHOULD feel, SHOULD remember, & SHOULD strive to re-create. Let me say it in shorthand: we all think holidays should be like that because the marketers SAY we all should think so, so they can sell us more shit & make more money. I can guarantee if the advertisers of the world thought they could make as much money & control mass-consumption as effectively, they'd all be marketing messages & images of whatever it was they'd determined we'd all respond & open our wallets to.
Holidays are not ruled by stereotype. Holidays are nothing more than opportunities of endless sales hype by unscrupulous, desperate advertisers & merchants who increasingly depend on the Christmas season to make most of their ANNUAL profits. Why? Because it's less work than having to put as much effort forth during the rest of the year, and less expensive than giving the consumer a decent deal to begin with. Most holidays in the western world are dominated by what the greeting card industry pioneers & designates as holidays, did you know that? First Hallmark decides it's Hairdressers Day, then the rest all fall into line with an endless barrage of advertising including nostalgic art, songs, etc. of what our Relationship with the Hairdresser was in the Good Old Days - with of course all the cards, gifts, etc. that go with it. Voila: another excuse to mulct the average citizen for more money, or create feelings of shame if s/he fails to comply, because s/he is selfish, a scrooge, yadda yadda yadda.
Am I on target? You bet your bippy I am.
SO, therefore, I say tell the marketers to stick it where the sun don't shine, and start your OWN, indigenous traditions that have nothing to do with their faux racial memories of Olde Englande. If you eat roast beast, for god's sake at least eat it because you want to & you like it, NOT because some goddamned advertising suit somewhere has determined that you should feel you should.
I, personally, am sick & tired of contrived cultural Occasions serving only to advance commercial interests. Hallmark - go to hell.
I yield the soapbox. Thanx for listening/reading.
5 - Elvira Black
Ah, so Stan and STM--that clever, lovable Aussie commenter--are one and the same? Eureka!
What a charming story. Bravo.
6 - STM
Dawn wrote: "I wish there were a way to make Christmas decorations look as nifty during the day as they do at night."
A flock of squawking coackatoos does the trick.
And thanks Elvira ... I'm flattered. A VERY merry Christmas to you!
7 - Matthew T. Sussman
I am made of Christmas magic.
8 - STM
A Christmas fairy?
9 - STM
BTW, Elvira ... judging by the name of your wonderful blog, I'm assuming that you've had some previous contact with Australians (hope it was all good, or you've at least still got a liver).
While the term shithouse rat is in common usage Down Under - (as in, "he/she's as cunning as a shithouse rat") - it wasn't a term anyone I knew was familiar with last time I was in New York.
On the one time I used it, everyone just stood there staring at me. Blankly, too. Or perhaps they misunderstood the first part of it ... quite likely, as we do tend to string our words together in one long belt of sound.
10 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Stan,
I enjoyed your article. It's cold in Samaria, and I'm supposed to make it into town today to talk with an Aussie who still prefers Sydney to Israel when it comes to weather, even though he has been here for thirty years or more.
You make the place sound an awful lot like Eilat in the summer. 40 Centigrade! That's hot!!! You could almost fry ham and eggs in the sun!!
Enjoy your holiday and try not to overheat the car obeying your little girl...
11 - STM
Hey Ruvy ... when you wrote "it's cold here in Samaria" I got the goose bumps. I think it's just the casual mention - like "it's hot here in Mona Vale" - of a place from the bible stories.
Amazing. Bloody Aussies, eh. I bet he still has trouble being understood. What we speak isn't officially part of the English language.
Last summer, we had quite a few days above 40, including one that clocked in at 46-47 out west. The back of your throat feels like it's burning when you breathe. But we all know the survival tricks: as much water as possible, and shade to keep out of the direct sunlight.
However, temperatures between 35 and 40 are very common here in summer. Mate, also, when I was a young reporter, my boss once sent me and a veteran photographer out to get a shot of someone frying eggs on the footpath.
We could have, but it would have been messy. So we got a Greek guy from a hamburger place down the street to cook one up on the grill then recruited some kids to stand around while we put it down on the concrete. Old trick, that one.
All for the headline: "Hot enough to fry an egg", which always lines up nicely next to "State is a tinderbox".
12 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
"Amazing. Bloody Aussies, eh. I bet he still has trouble being understood. What we speak isn't officially part of the English language."
Actually, this chap speaks with a broad British accent (you get to recognize every version of the Queen's English here). He doesen't sound or act like a Brit, but he lost a lot of the Aussie twang while serving as a prison guard here.
He learned to accentuate the spit and polish aspect of things to get the respect of the Arabs he had to deal with - native Israelis have no class at all, and haven't the sense to use the tools they need to to win an Arab's respect. We're paying for that now - in blood. It's remarkable how many lives could be saved by some well applied shoe polish, some class, and some good manners.
"when you wrote "it's cold here in Samaria" I got the goose bumps."
Another trick of the trade, mate. Go check out that little TV clip I sent out over e-mail to Blogcritcs @ yahoogroups. Not so much for me - I'm just a bald guy with glasses who cracks wise. Check out the background. Jerusalem is just as real as Niniveh was. From where I live in the nountains, you can see the mountains of Moav in the distanc4, across the Jordan where my ancestors encamped 3,300 years ago before entering this country...
Anyway, I got to run.
13 - STM
Yes, we say aren't like the Poms ... but trust me, in most things military - especially when it comes to shiny shoes, belt buckles and trouser creases - we are exactly like them.
14 - Elvira Black
"BTW, Elvira ... judging by the name of your wonderful blog, I'm assuming that you've had some previous contact with Australians (hope it was all good, or you've at least still got a liver)."
Um, lets see now...well, do the Bee Gees, Men at Work, and Olivia Newton-John count? Not that I know them personally, of course...but no, unfortunately I don't know any Austrailans, save for the stray one or two who might comment to my blog now and then--and now you of course.
"Crazier than a shithouse rat" is not a phrase you hear often in New York, but I think I first heard it from my boyfriend, who used to live in Louisiana. It just seems like the kind of phrase you need to deliver in a southern drawl--or I guess in an Aussie accent--to be truly effective.
While NYC isn't quite as hot this time of year, I really think we're experiencing some kind of badass global warming trend. Not only was the summer unbearable, but so far we've been experiencing spring-like temps for the most part. White Christmas? I don't think so...
15 - S.T.M
That's interesting about the Louisiana connection. I thought it was an Aussie thing as it's pretty common here. Yeah, but we do have a drawl too don't we?
And yep, I agree about the weather. While it's always really hot here in summer and usually very mild (like a northern hemisphere Spring at worst) in winter, last summer we had quite a few days over 40C, which is really unbearable. On one day, the temperature hit 45C near the coast, and was even hotter out west.
Not a good look when much of the country is already in the grip of a very long drought.
16 - Donnie Marler
Great article, Stan! I remember driving my kids around to look at the Christmas lights here. They loved it, and truth to tell, I did too. Good stuff!
17 - MAOZ
#14 Elvira: "... the kind of phrase you need to deliver in a southern drawl--or I guess in an Aussie accent..."
Well, gosh, you could hardly get much more southern than Australia, could you? Unless you want to start speaking Penguinese.
18 - tink
Stan...great tale, mate! Although it's been years (too many!!) since I've been Down Under, your story took me right back.
Gotta an extra Foster's handy???
19 - STM
Ha, tink ... the old Foster's. I used to drink it before I discovered another of the Carlton Brewery's great drops: Victoria Bitter (VB), which outstrips sales of Foster's here by about 50-1.
However, Carlton, a Melbourne brewery, has been marketing its products up here in New South Wales, and my son and his mates now all drink Carlton Draught, which they swear is a cut above VB.
An LA story: In the hills behind Los Angeles once, I was coming back down with an old American mate from Sydney who'd been showing me around and we stopped at a store where a whole lot of blue-collar workers had parked their pick-ups after work. They were enjoying a few beers - Buds, I think - on the verandah. We pull up in the BMW and get some heavy looks as we get out of the yuppy car. My mate asks me if I want a beer and I go and sit outside with the locals, exchange pleasantries and pull out a gold packet of English Benson and Hedges and light up. More bleak looks.
He comes back out a few seconds later and tells me: "They've got Foster's... want one of those?
"Oh yes," I reply. "Two, thanks."
Then he comes back out, giggling, with two GIANT cans (really, they were huge. I'd never seen anything like it before. Two pints, are they?) of Foster's beer and nonchalantly hands 'em to me - that put them frowning Yanks in their place pretty quick.
My mate told them I was Australian and that's what they drink (we don,t, Tink, as you'd know). Everyone just started laughing. Except me. I just raised me can with two hands and got into it.