Christ, look at the time. There we are, beavering away at WP Towers when suddenly we look up and realise it’s already ten to Christmas.

How did that happen? Haven’t we only just put the April/May edition to bed? Nope, a quick check shows that K-Mart’s packed with tinsel and the accounts department is already bleating on about Secret Santas. There’s no getting away from it, then. Christmas is suddenly just around the corner.
That’s a daunting enough thought if you’re happily living out your years in the routine comfort zone of your homeland but, for us daring ex-pats, the festive season can be daunting. How does it work here? Is it, like everything else in this hot, dry land, just the same but completely different?
’Fraid so, mate. So, to guide you through the season of goodwill if it’s your first one on this side of the world, we’re going to go all traditional and offer you ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas – Australian Style’.

On the first day of Christmas, my true love send to me, some bare twigs we’ll call a Christmas Tree.

There’s an important theme that runs through Christmas down under – and that’s the upside down seasons. It’s this which is behind the ‘everything’s the same but different’ feel to yuletide here.
Your average British ex-pat, you see, will have spent his or her formative years crowding round open fires on Christmas Eve, blowing through their hands between carols at Midnight Mass and hoping but never truly believing that it might snow.
There’s none of that here. Christmas is hot, often blisteringly so, and it’s that heat that does its best to melt away the traditions of the seasons. That old standard, the Christmas tree, for instance suffers as badly as a fat ginger kid in the kind of temperatures you can expect as your kids flip open the doors on their advent calendars.
Bastions of tradition that Australians are, there are farms everywhere that grow evergreen firs in the barren soil of the southern hemisphere, ready to be cut down and potted in your living room. They look great in situ, but even by the time you’re untying the poor thing from your roof rack it’ll be worse for wear. When you finally get it indoors, it will have left a sea of needles in its wake that you’ll be picking out of the sofa for months to come. Finally standing upright, you’ll spin it round and round looking for any semblance of green. Once you’ve eventually found the box of decorations under the stairs, you’ll be hanging baubles on a bare, brown skeleton and you’ll begin to understand why most Australians opt for a fake one.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love sent to me too sunny ads, and some bare twigs we’ll call a Christmas tree.

Yay! Check out the clever pun. Seriously though, in the lead-up to Christmas, it’ll be in the minutes between parts two and three of NCIS that you’ll have it driven home how different Jesus H’s birthday is down here.
Technically, the Christmas adverts here are no different to those you’d get from ITV back home – supermarkets desperate to offload ridiculous amounts of food and booze, department stores dictating what pieces of plastic your kids are going to covet this year, tyre manufacturers cashing in on the season by forcing their fitters into bushy Santa beards – but there is one big, disturbing difference.
It’s all sunny.
Yep, when the ‘typical Ozzie family’ comes out of Coles, they don’t go home to a roaring fire, they pile their purchases into an Eski and head for the beach. Jingle Bells will be playing in the background as Target pushes perfume, socks and jocks, but the happy householders unwrapping their gifts will be wearing boardies and bikinis, not mittens and scarves.
You’ll get used to it, but the first time you see Father Christmas surfing in an attempt to sell you a new three-piece suite in time for Boxing Day can come as a bit of a shock.

On the third day of Christmas, my true love sent to me three weeks off, too sunny ads, and some bare twigs we’ll call a Christmas tree.

You know how some things are different but also better? Well here’s the big one, Christmas-wise. For most everyone, the season of goodwill means downing tools for two or three weeks.
Yes, the important jobs – doctors, police, firefighters, petrol station attendants – have to keep going regardless, but just about everyone else clocks off around December the tenth and doesn’t even look at their shirt and tie again until some point way after their New Year’s hangover has finally receded.
As usual, teachers, God bless ’em, get it best. As schools’ Christmas hols here are also their summer hols, the sirs and misses in state classrooms have it ridiculously good. Even they, however, are outstripped by those teaching private school kids, who hang up their mortar boards in the first week of December and go back in . . .  February. Still, poor lambs have deserved it, all those 3pm finishes can really take it out of you. 

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me, four boogie boards, three weeks off, too sunny ads, and some bare twigs we’ll call a Christmas tree.

A good hearty walk after Christmas dinner is as traditional in Britain as sleeping with your mouth open during the Queen’s speech. Wrapped up against the elements, over-hearty dads will drag their sulking teenagers through forests, over dale and down glen and back again. Truth is, no one really enjoys it – Jake would much rather be at home with his DSi and Tiffany is just desperate to Twitter about how lame the whole event is.
Not so this side of the planet. It’s the weather again, but down here when the wrapping paper’s finally stopped flying and everyone’s feeling a bit too full of chocolate, the Christmas afternoon out of choice is simple – head to the beach.
The difference, of course, is that this is something the whole household actually wants to do. Mum gets a chance to top up her tan, Dad can sink a few stubbies while playing beach cricket with the neighbours, Tiffany might get to see the blonde lifesaver she’s got her eye on and Jake gets to try out his new boogie board.
And alongside him will be a score of other adolescents also riding the waves on brightly-coloured pieces of polysterene. After all, at eight bucks a pop from K-Mart, they are the ubiquitous present of choice downunder. Sure beats a hand-knitted jumper.

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me, five choc-full bins! Four boogie boards, three weeks off, too sunny ads, and some bare twigs we’ll call a Christmas tree.

You think the British know how to consume? Trust me, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The green message is slowly but surely seeping through in Australia, but it hasn’t made anywhere near the inroads it has in the much more PC suburbs of our homeland. They may be reusing, repairing and recycling in Hertfordshire, but in Rockingham and Rockhampton it’s still simply use, chuck, buy more.
As such, there’s a hell of a lot of waste gonna be generated over the festive period here. Wheelybins will overflow with Barbie and Ben 10 packaging and come the New Year the convoys of 4x4s, utes and trailer-bedecked sedans will start transporting the detritus of 12 days of Australian Christmas to state-run tips.
But, hey, it’s all about excess at this time of year, isn’t it? And anyway, Australia’s a big country and there’s still a lot of places to hide the trash.

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me, six geese a-giggling, five choc-full bins! Four boogie boards, three weeks off, too sunny ads, and some bare twigs we’ll call a Christmas tree.

And why, exactly, are the geese a-giggling? Well, truth is the turkeys are too – both of them chuckling into their feathers at the fact that they’ve got a better chance than their British counterparts of actually living through this Christmas.
The thing is that the traditional Christmas lunch – roast fowl with all the trimmings, bowls of steaming veg, thick gravy and a rich, rich pudding ready to be set ablaze once the plates are clear – just doesn’t work in Australia.
Even the most enthusiastic of amateur chefs doesn’t want to be sweating over a hot stove in 40 degree heat on Christmas afternoon putting together the kind of feast that would have made Tiny Tim’s eyes pop out.
No, Christmas menus in Oz don’t vary wildly from the day-to-day – meaning barbecues are still the order of the day over the festive period. It’s the prawns, fish, cows and snag-producing pigs, then, who look at December 25th on their calendars with a sense of immense foreboding. The only difference, of course, is that while half a dozen steaks will do for an Australia Day barbie, come Christmas you’re gonna need at least a whole cow’s worth.

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love sent to me, seven hours of Simpsons, six geese a-giggling, five choc-full bins! Four boogie boards, three weeks off, too sunny ads, and some bare twigs we’ll call a Christmas tree.

When I was a lad, buying the Christmas edition of the Radio Times was every bit as important a yuletide tradition as picking the tree. Having those two weeks of listings in your hands meant that the big day was just round the corner.
I’d pore for ages over Barry Norman’s film guide, desperate to see which new Bond was going to grace Christmas afternoon, which old classics were going to help me get through the last days before Father Christmas finally turned up. My heart would beat that bit faster at the thought of the Vicar of Dibley Christmas Special, I’d even feel a glow of happiness as I contemplated Carols at Kings.
Television was – is – a staple of British Christmas. When the BBC runs its festive trailers and ITV puts snow on its logos, you know it’s on its way.
In Australia, though, if you woke up from a coma on Christmas Day and turned on the box, you’d have no idea you were anywhere near the season of goodwill. Maybe it’s because TV here understands it can’t compete with the sun-drenched family culture of Australians, but it doesn’t even seem to try. Chances are Christmas Day’s line-up will be a couple of Boston Legals, some more Bones, three episodes of M*A*S*H and seven hours of Simpsons.
All of it, as ever, not worth the effort of hunting for the remote. Which, possibly, is actually a good thing, but I can’t help but pine for the sight of Delboy and Rodney’s tinsel-strewn Peckham flat.

On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me, eight months on layby, seven hours of Simpsons, six geese a-giggling, five choc-full bins! Four boogie boards, three weeks off, too sunny ads, and some bare twigs we’ll call a Christmas tree.

Major Huntley Rabbit writing about how Christmas starts earlier and earlier each year is a bastion of English newspaper letters pages each and every October. He’ll have seen a bauble in Debenhams, got suitably outraged, whipped out the green ink and bashed out a stern missive to the Buckingham Bugle.
Best, then, that he stays in Acacia Avenue, rather than heading downunder for the festive season. Here, thanks to a wonderful system known as ‘layby’, the big stores such as K-Mart and Target encourage you to start thinking about your Christmas shopping more or less as soon as you hit Valentine’s Day.
To give them their due, there is sense in layby-ing. The idea is that you pick out a load of truck you want to buy, it’s put away in the stock room and you pay for it bit by bit, without any interest, and take it home as soon as you’ve coughed up the full price. You don’t, of course, have to save layby for Christmas – the service works all year round – but so many people plan their festive shop using it that sales cropping up mid-March will tempt you to start thinking about what the kids will be unwrapping on Christmas morn.
All in all, very sensible. Unless of course you’re simply not anal enough to get the thing organised. This writer proudly put $600 worth of toys away on layby in August. I currently still owe $560. I really should get round to making another payment.

 On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me, nine empty churches, eight months on layby, seven hours of Simpsons, six geese a-giggling, five choc-full bins! Four boogie boards, three weeks off, too sunny ads, and some bare twigs we’ll call a Christmas tree.

Australia is a Christian country – and generally quite a devout one. There’s an underlying prudent conservatism that belies the up-front persona of your average Aussie that stems from the more strait-jacketing forms of Christianity. It’s this which is largely responsible for the more old-fashioned parts of its culture – ridiculous shopping hours, for instance and the whole general intolerance of anything different.
There’s even bands of evangelicals roaming the suburbs in starched white shirts and sunglasses looking for weak minds to convert, so there’s no doubting the word of the Good Lord abounds down under.
Sometimes, though, it’s hard to notice it.
I’m a long, long way from being a practicing God-botherer, but there have always been bits of Christianity that, at least on a traditional, aesthetic value, I quite like to cherry pick. The whole Nativity thing, for instance. That’s a really nice tale, isn’t it? Carol singers. Who doesn’t like to blast out O Come All The Faithful every now and then? Midnight Mass. If you’re only going to one church service this year . . . then make sure it’s this one.
In Australia, though, it’s rare Mary’s Boy Child will get a mention at all in the lead up to the big day. If you think I’m just looking in the wrong places, try this test: Go out and try to find an advent calendar that has the whole stable, shepherds and wise men thing on it rather than Dora the Explorer or Hannah Montana. Or a nativity model like your gran used to have. Or, in fact, anything that points towards JC’s birthday.
OK, it may be that nine empty churches is an exaggeration, but there’s no getting away from the fact the hallelulahs nowadays are more likely to be for a new Xbox than a new king.

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me, ten slabs of lager, nine empty churches, eight months on layby, seven hours of Simpsons, six geese a-giggling, five choc-full bins! Four boogie boards, three weeks off, too sunny ads, and some bare twigs we’ll call a Christmas tree.

Australians like a drink or two. Have we mentioned that before in WP? Well, they do.
During the rest of the year, your average Aussie won’t be seen dead buying his Victoria Bitter in anything less that a 24-bottle crate and wine has to come at least six at a time. Christmas, then, being the time of excess that it is, they’re gonna have to push the envelope a bit. Hence, the real reasons for drive-through bottle shops. Never seen someone bring a trailer to an off licence before? You can guarantee you’ll witness it in the run-up to Christmas. There’s a lot of drinking to come.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love sent to me, eleven ex-pats Skyping, ten slabs of lager, nine empty churches, eight months on layby, seven hours of Simpsons, six geese a-giggling, five choc-full bins! Four boogie boards, three weeks off, too sunny ads, and some bare twigs we’ll call a Christmas tree.

Day to day, the average ex-pat doesn’t have much time for naval-gazing. We’ve still got to go to work, still got to look after the kids. We may be in a different country, but we’re here to live, not to holiday.
Come Christmas, however, especially if we’re one of the many who benefit from the long festive break, suddenly we’ve got time on our hands, time to reflect. And, of course, we’re doing it at a time when reminiscing and looking back through rose-tinted spectacles is all too easy.
Now, then, is the moment when we bombard all those people we’d meant to keep in regular contact with over the last year but haven’t with messages. Texts fly, emails get sent, phone calls made. Teenagers are kicked off Skype and finally we’re doing as promised – going face to face with parents, siblings and old friends via the magic of the internet.
And, thanks to the vagaries of time zones, we’ll be doing it drunk while those back in the UK are sitting bemused and a little bit embarrassed in front of their computers or on the other end of the phone.
You see, by 4pm on Christmas Day, us ex-pats will already have had plenty of time to start with a couple of Bucks Fizzes, move onto the chardonnay, crack open the Bourbon we got from work and make a big dent on the slab of Coronas in the backyard fridge. As such, Britons in exile across Australia will be weeping drunkenly into their keyboards as relatives and friends sit listening to just how much we love them and how much we miss them – very, very early on frosty Christmas mornings across the UK.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me, twelve maxed-out Visas, eleven ex-pats Skyping, ten slabs of lager, nine empty churches, eight months on layby, seven hours of Simpsons, six geese a-giggling, five choc-full bins! Four boogie boards, three weeks off, too sunny ads, and some bare twigs we’ll call a Christmas tree.

And it’s all very expensive. Which kind of goes without saying – and isn’t any different to the UK – but we’ll point it out anyway. Without even a stimulus-payment Christmas bonus from Kevin Rudd to help you through it, you’re going to have to have your credit cards well charged. Still, I’m sure it’ll all be worth it. Merry Christmas – see you on the beach.