Christmas in Australia

Christmas is an interesting holiday for me because I've spent so much time studying it. I wrote my honours thesis on Christmas in Australia: specifically the retention of British traditions, the incorporation of native Australian elements, and commercialisation. In the course of that research, I read through years of December newspapers and magazines, looking at images, stories, advertisements and articles on Christmas celebrations, Christmas presents, Christmas food and Christmas sentiment. It felt a bit like an overdose, to be honest.

One of the threads of public discourse that I constantly encountered was the idea that Christmas in Australia would never really be a 'proper' Christmas. While only a few people would have agreed with outspoken Marcus Clarke who claimed that Christmas in Australia was 'a gigantic mistake' (he even admitted that his belief might be seen as 'rank heresy'), there were many who recognised that bringing a traditional European celebration into an Australian summer necessitated 'maimed rites'.

There was a constant tension between showing that Australians could celebrate Christmas in the traditional way and arguing that they shouldn't have to. Being able to reproduce the trappings of a 'real' Christmas was a sign that Australia was still a civilized place, despite its isolation and frontier status.  Even in the 1950s, which was the point my thesis stopped so my research stopped, every writer in a woman's magazine who gave an alternative to the Christmas pudding was still holding up the traditional, holly-bedecked, brandy-drizzled, ablaze pudding as the norm from which one deviated.

Of course, the "traditional" British Christmas that many writers held up as an ideal was of a relatively short history itself. The Christmas of the 19th century - focused on family gatherings, private & domestic celebrations - was a striking contrast to the more public, rowdy festivities of earlier centuries. But that is an entirely different strand of argument.

Calls to create a particularly Australian Christmas usually involved incorporating native Australian plants and animals into new duties as Christmas icons - wattle for mistletoe, ferns instead of firs. In 1941, arguing that the Americans had taken on poinsettias as their own new symbol of Christmas, one writer suggested that Australians should use Christmas bells and Christmas bush. Christmas bush was popular to decorate with, and indeed in 1881 an article in the Australian Town and Country Journal mentioned that its price was rising with its scarcity and that people who had it growing in their yards were reporting branches being stolen. But it never became one of the public symbols of Christmas, with newspaper illustrations, Christmas cards and advertisements continuing to prefer holly and mistletoe.

I'm fascinated by the duality of the Australian Christmas, and not just as a researcher (if anyone is interested, I have an article on the duality of an Australian Christmas using the Christmas pudding published  here in the journal Eras). As someone who has lived through Christmases here and overseas, I find that I need that tension and duality to be able to enjoy it. I love that I can view dried fruit AND cranberries AND cherries as Christmas fruits, for example. I don't think I'll ever be able to totally view a hot Christmas as normal - but neither is a snowy one.

This Christmas, for a variety of reasons, a lot of my usual traditions won't be happening. So I'm going to take the opportunity to experiment, particularly with food, to see where I can really tease out this dual image of Christmas.