Words, Dominic Cadden

December in Perth turns Christmas on its head. Father Christmas is utterly overdressed, sand and surf replace snow and sleet and it’s too hot to turn on an oven.

The Aussie regard for the English Christmas traditions is such that the 12 days of Christmas get confused for the number of days to take off work. And how exactly did prawns, oysters and pavlova come to replace roast birds, hams and plum pudding? The Aussie Christmas can be a confusing and alienating time of year for the ex-pat, but you know what they say ­– when in Rome … it’s Christians versus the lions.

Upside-down Traditions
It’s true that Christmas here is still based on largely Anglo-American practices and mythology centred around the cold and snow, hot comfort foods, some weird fat guy from the polar opposite end of the earth and a magic baby with some serious stalkers. And most of it is about as relevant to Australians as the collapse of an Icelandic bank.

We’re here wondering who Holly and Ivy are and just how mad for the merry organ they are now that they’re full grown. We gave up speculating whether ‘Yuletide’ brings an ace onshore swell for surfing or not. As for all this stuff about a White Christmas, it’s about as foreign to us as those Herald Angels that sing “Hark!”, although my guess is that they have some combination of a speech impediment and Tourette Syndrome. Yet we go along with all this, because it’s exotic and a great excuse for parties, presents and piss-ups.

Besides, for the most part we can’t be arsed trying to come up with something more appropriate. Deck the halls with raw prawns? A kiss under the marijuana buds, anyone? There have been some efforts to put an Aussie twist on Christmas but often people find them a little embarrassing. By now you’ve probably caught sight of at least one Father Christmas dressed in board shorts, thongs, zinc cream and sunnies, his hat being the only part remaining from his standard uniform. Often he’s surfing, or threatening to. Australian Christmas decorations are a hodge-podge of everything from American-style lighting displays on houses, spray-on snow on windows and the strange prevalence of life-size Santas hanging upside-down off roofs. Rolf Harris had a go at the carols biz with Six White Boomers, a wobbleboard tale about how Santa swaps reindeer for giant kangaroos for the Australian leg. There’s also been a suggestion that ‘Swag Man’ take over Santa's franchise Down Under. Swag Man wears a brown Akubra, a blue singlet and long baggy shorts. He spends all winter under Uluru with his merry dingoes and then at Christmas time, he gets in his huge four-wheel drive and sets off through the red dust to deliver his presents.

Another effort, which falls under ‘bullshit we like to tell Yanks’, came from Hugh Jackman when he hosted a Saturday Night Live Christmas special. He told the tale of the ‘Christmas Kangaroo’, a Santa-like figure who would visit all the houses in Australia on Christmas Eve with presents for the kiddies. The catch was that your father had to fight the Christmas Kangaroo and, if he won, the kids could have whatever they wanted. One Christmas Jackman’s dad lost, so the Christmas Kangaroo got what he wanted, which was to sodomize the man of the family. After a five-year losing streak, the young Jackman suspected his dad was throwing the fights, so he took on the Christmas Kangaroo on and killed it himself. “Now on Christmas morning, all the Australian boys and girls might not get toys,” Jackman told 11 million Americans, “but they're spared the horror of watching a giant marsupial take their old man to Brown Town.” Pathetic, eh?

The Silly Season
Even in the lead-up to Christmas you’ve no doubt seen some of the subtle variations, some due to the difference in season, others due to cultural shifts, or a combination of the two. One thing that hits the eye will be the prevalence of fake trees made of some concoction of low-grade plastic and tinsel. This trend comes about from a distinct lack of aesthetic taste as it does from the cold environmental fact that if all residents went out and got real trees for Christmas, the resultant erosion would cause a landslide that would see most of West Australia washed away to Antarctica. Or so the environmentalists tell us. You have been warned.

Nativity plays and even pantomimes, even though they are the major employer of Australians in the UK after pubs and cricket clubs, are much less prominent here. This is largely because with the weather this warm and sunny it’s easier to organise yet another outdoor Christmas party instead, and besides, we suspect nativity plays and pantos are gay. Similarly, door-to-door carol singing has never taken off, as the combination of singing and all that walking in temperatures in the mid-thirties could lead to serious dehydration, and the different nature of the typical suburban dwelling could leave you open to dog attacks or some Wolf Creek-style action as you make your way through endless front yards. Even in suburbs with apartment buildings, strata title by-law 283 (C) states that singing in shared or open areas is punishable by fines and/or public stoning. We do, however, herd people into common areas for ‘Carols by candlelight’, where you can join with the locals in song and look up at the hosting area to see which local celebrities’ careers are on the slide. 

Yule Party On
A keen Christmas tradition for Australian office workers is to collect as many invites to Christmas parties and use this as a level of one-upmanship that rates up there with collecting awards from the Queen does for Brits. Consequently, attending parties often takes consequence over other aspects of commercial life, such as earning money. This (and the extension of Christmas holiday) is why it often becomes difficult to do business in Australia from mid-November until late January.

The hot weather gives Christmas parties a new context in Australia. At home, there might be lot of crowding indoors and drinking while huddled around a log fire. In Australia, there’s the possibility of frolicking around swimming pools, having the party out on a boat and much semi-nudity to snap the sexual tension between workers who usually only see each other in sensible office attire. (A lunchtime Christmas party I attended somehow led to a nude biathlon on a public beach before the food even arrived. One poor guy consequently earned the nickname ‘Cashew’ for the next four years.) Couple this with copious amounts of alcohol and you can see why Australian divorce rates climb sharply in January and keep rising until they peak in May.

Exchanging gifts or cards with workmates is usually not usually done, although the ‘Kris Kringle’ system is often used for work Christmas parties. Be warned that Aussies are a little less likely than Brits to give ‘sensible’ presents on such occasions. So the office AA candidate will probably get a bottle of cleaning alcohol and the woman with a fiancé on a six-month Red Cross mission to the Sudan may well receive a vibrator. The office brown-nose may break the spend limit and buy his middle-management supervisor a used copy of Mein Kampf. On the whole, though, creativity is encouraged, but overspending is not – in the interests of the Christmas spirit, Aussies know to leave some money aside for the post Christmas sales.  

The Weather Report     
In Europe and the UK, Christmas comes with some certainties: the Queen will be on the telly, the French will go on strike and the weather will be cold and dark and miserable. The only variable is whether God’s frozen dandruff falls on your homeland, which may make it slightly less miserable. In Australia, however, the weather report for Christmas day takes on the significance of the Second Coming.

First, there’s the influence on the cooking. In some households, maximum temperature forecasts of 25-30°C may make it acceptable to have an oven on to cook a traditional turkey or roast pork. Anything hotter often means a switch to an all-cold menu, often dominated by seafood. This means hours at the seafood markets with the rest of Perth participating in the genocide of crustaceans, as well as procuring enough ice to freeze hell. And forget about lighting that Christmas pudding – you risk getting copped with a whopping fine for a flame during a total fire ban, or worse, the wind will catch it and next thing you know you’ll be responsible for a bushfire covering the area of Scotland.

If it’s stinking hot, Australians will want to be out of the house, preferably near water or a pool. But if there’s the threat of summer thunderstorms, alternative plans will be drawn up with the attention usually reserved for large-scale coastal invasions.

Either way, there is an annoying snag. Because the ground will not be frozen outside, exposure to the wind doesn’t risk hypothermia and it won’t be getting dark at 4pm, you’ll be required to play with the kids new toys and sporting equipment for hours on end, no matter how stuffed or blotto you are. The Australian is much more accustomed to this and so Christmas afternoons often precipitate into some great sporting contest over anything - cricket, remote-controlled cars, boogie-boarding, totem tennis, whatever. With adults fuelled by cheap ‘champagne’ (read: Australian sparkling white wine) and kids by sugar, the competition inevitably deteriorates into cheating and sledges about parentage, ethnic origins and the sexual domination of their loved ones, until some participants remember they are actually blood relatives.

The ‘Orphans Christmas’
Yet while, for many Brits, Christmas can be very much about putting on a stiff upper lip and tolerating extended family, many Australians are separated from their family either by the tyranny of distance, or their complete lack of giving a stuff. These Australians, along with ex-pats who don’t have families with them and the many long-term European tourists, are known as ‘Christmas orphans’.

Being alone here at Christmas doesn’t seem as embarrassing or depressing when it need not mean moping around in a cold flat. The weather means that Christmas orphans can gather outdoors in public areas at no expense and be with each other. This provides a much better alternative to taking up a sympathetic invitation to tag along to someone’s traditional family Christmas and sticking out like the proverbial dag on the sheep’s bum. ‘Orphans Christmases’ are so common that you may see gatherings advertised in December, but a safe bet is to pack up some food and drink, a small amount of money and some other vitals (sunscreen, antiseptic, condoms, Indonesian phrasebook) and head off to the nearest major beach. Simply look for the most disparate and childless group of people and head on over with your Christmas spirit – vodka and Scotch are universally accepted, but freezing cold white wine is also good to combat the heat. It is not uncommon to go off to an orphans’ Christmas at the beach and then lose all memory of events until you wake up on January 3rd next to an unknown German backpacker and you both have a crocodile tattoo on your crotch you can’t remember getting.    

The Day After
Boxing Day is embraced in Australia as it is in the UK but with subtle differences. For many it’s about worshipping one of the traditional sporting events around the country, such as the Boxing Day Test match, or the post-Christmas sales. The post-Christmas sales seem to be modern Australia’s attempt to recreate some of the adrenalin-pumped and dangerous atmosphere of some of Europe’s traditional exhilarating events such as Pamplona’s running of the bulls, the Siena Palio or the Cheese Rolling in Gloucestershire. For department stores and major electrical chains, it’s worth getting there well before opening time so that you can experience the rush of the initial stampede and get in the mood as you witness the floor manager’s nose get snapped like a turkey wishbone by the force of the door being pushed down. As with most sports, Australians take this very seriously: their training methods and strategy in this area are world-leading. Be prepared with checklists, prioritise your targets and be prepared to play dirty – decoy tactics, crutches used purely for interference and insider trading to have some things ‘put aside’ is not unheard of. Exchanging or getting refunds on unwanted presents is considered part of the natural order.

For others, Boxing Day marks the start of the holidays and roads leading out of town are often slow, although this has more to do with local police revenue-raising with speed guns than it does with traffic congestion. You see, so many Australian workplaces got tired of workers competing (via blackmail, threats of ‘workplace accidents’, etc) for holiday time so they could string together the Christmas and New Year public holidays, that they simply gave up. Now, so many workplaces close for 10–14 days in this period that even the Indonesians could invade WA during this period and few people would notice until January 5th at the earliest.

And if that happened, then Christmas would be really screwed up next year.