I thought I'd tell you about a typical Christmas in Australia.
When
October arrives, shops begin to put up all of their beautiful Christmas
decorations.
In November they begin to put on traditional Christmas music,
so that you can hear it as you walk through the shopping centres. This makes
many of us feel "Christmassy" - we say that it gives us "the Christmas spirit".
Most of our shopping centres are like Wanda Plaza, except that we don't have
restaurants in them- we have coffee shops where you can also order food, but
generally people only eat lunch there. Many people do their Christmas
shopping during the year, when they can buy their presents at good prices.
There is a particular shop (originating in Germany) that is becoming more and
more popular throughout the world.
It's called "Aldi". Besides selling food,
they sell all sorts of high quality items such as children's books, toys,
homeware (bed sheets, towels etc.), tools, beauty products, electrical items,
computers- just about anything that you can think of- at extremely good prices.
I buy gifts for
my family during the year at Aldi. Their stock changes every
week, so you never know what they will have next week, although most of the food
is the same. When Christmas comes, they sell the most delicious Christmas food.
Of course, I, and most other people, now have to go on a diet after eating
Christmas food for the last month.
This must be rather like Spring Festival
when you have special food.In the last week before Christmas, the shops become
extremely busy, as people do their last-minute shopping.
And during the last
couple of days before Christmas, people buy so much food that sometimes there
isn't very much left on the shelves in the shops. This is ironic, as the shops
are only closed on Christmas day.
When I was young, the shops closed for a
Christmas holiday period of 3 days, so people did perhaps need to buy extra
food. But these days the shops are only closed for Christmas day.
In fact,
today is the day after Christmas. This is called "Boxing Day". Originally, may
years ago, people who had servants wrapped gifts in boxes and sent them to their
servants the day after Christmas. Needless to say, we don't have servants any
more, but today is still called "Boxing Day".
Now we have big sales in the
shops on Boxing Day. So, despite the fact that people have received gifts
yesterday, there will be thousands of people in Australia out in the shops today
buying all sorts of things at the sales. Women particularly love to buy reduced
clothing, shoes and make-up, but all sorts of things are reduced.
In this
way, the shops are very happy to make a lot more money after Christmas than they
probably did before Christmas.
As you know, Christmas is originally a
religious occasion, whereas now it has become mostly a secular occasion. But the
singing of Christmas carols still plays a very important role in Australian
Christmases. There are many different churches or groups that organise big
Christmas concerts in parks, and parents take their children to these each year.
Of course, Santa comes by for a quick visit to hand out lollies (candy) and to
remind all of the children to be good so that they will get their Christmas
presents.
In addition to the carols in the parks, there are 2 main carols
services broadcast on TV-one in Sydney and one in Melbourne. These are like the
big concert you have at Spring Festival that everyone watches on TV. There are
famous singers and performers, and it is a highquality production. Once again,
Santa always comes to visit. These are live concerts held in the biggest parks
in Sydney and Melbourne, and thousands of people attend them.
Of course, as
Christmas is still a religious occasion for many people, people go to church,
usually before Christmas, but many also go on Christmas day. The modern churches
put on special concerts and carol services.
In my family, we celebrate
Christmas one day early, on the 24th of December, because we have to go and
visit other family members on Christmas day (the 25th), and we don't want to be
too tired.
I am in charge of our family meal. The tradition in Australia is
that every family brings something to contribute to the dinner. So I send an
email to my daughter and daughter-in-laws to tell them what food and drinks to
bring. In the end, we had ham and chicken, a noodle salad and a Caesar salad, as
well as some prawns. Before that, we usually have "nibbles" such as potato
chips, nuts or pretzels.For dessert we have something sweet. Traditionally,
people have Christmas pudding with custard and ice-cream, but this year we had
pavlova instead.It is meringue with fruit on it (strawberries and other berries,
banana, kiwi fruit, passion fruit) topped with cream and ice-cream. The
meriginue is very sweet-tooo sweet for Chinese people , I think.
Before the
meal, we all open our gifts. This is a lovely time, and the children are very
excited.
Often the adults have "secret Santa".We all buy a gift (this year we
decided that the cost would be $10) and we put the gift under the tree. Then
someone hands out the gifts and we don't know who bought our gift or what we are
getting. If we want to swap with someone, we can. So that is
an inexpensive
way for all of the adults to get a gift.
On Christmas day we sleep late
("sleep in") and have a relaxing morning, then go to visit Peter's relatives in
the afternoon and evening. By the end of the night, I am ready for a rest, so I
come home and watch TV before going to bed. Peter was very tired, so he is still
asleep while I'm writing this to you.
Of course, Christmas in Australia is
in summer and can be very hot. This year it was sunny and cool.
The most
popular place to be today will be at the beach, where lots of children will be
using their toys from "Santa'' or their parent toys such as goggles, flippers,
body boards for surfing, buckets and spade for making sand castles and so on I
forgot to mention that it's also very common on Christmas day for children who
receive bicycles/bikes to be out on the street riding up and down. After
Christmas lunch it's also very common to see families playing cricket in the
street in front of their homes or in the local park.
Also a nice cold beer
is very popular on a hot day.
So that's a bit of information about our Aussie
Christmas. We were working on Christmas day last year, so we didn't have any of
that. But we were still happy because we were with our friends and students (who
are also our friends) in Ningde.
I hope you enjoyed that. Maybe you can use
some of this for your classes Joe. Perhaps your students can translate some of
it.
Love from Jane (and Peter).
Written by Jane Haasnoot