Christmas Spirit

I imagined that Christmas would be awful. I’d been in Australia for eleven months by then and hadn’t once been queasy with homesickness. But this was to be my first Christmas away from home and I fully expected to develop some major symptoms.

I was surprised that Christmas is celebrated down under in much the same way as it is here. Australians are so proud of their own identity that I expected them to adapt Christmas and personalise it to their own culture – kangaroos in Santa hats, girls barbecuing in fur clad bikinis, a surfing Father Christmas – that sort of thing. But there was nothing of the kind. Fake snow was sprayed into the corners of windows, decorations were draped across the city streets and winter carols played in every shop. It was a strange sensation to see all this in the height of summer. Father Christmas isn’t quite as jolly when his beard is drenched with sweat and he’s on the verge of collapse because he’s wearing a thick red woollen suit in 35 degree heat. It was so far removed from any Christmas that I’d experienced before that there was nothing to remind me of what I was missing in England. Therefore, I didn’t feel homesick at all. The problem was that I didn’t feel very Christmassy either.

Without any familiar signs to prompt my brain into releasing the chemical responsible for festive cheer, each December day felt the same as a November or October one. There was no sense of build up or anticipation until, finally, on Christmas Eve, something happened.

It was the supermarket that did it. My flatmate and I were there to buy our dinner for the following day and the place was packed with frantic housewives. They all looked dishevelled and exhausted and there was a crazed look in their eyes as they jostled in the aisles, panic buying things they’d forgotten. ‘Oh. So it is Christmas,’ I thought, and was instantly possessed by the Christmas Spirit.

In the end I had a wonderful Christmas Day and, more importantly, it taught me what the season means to me personally. It isn’t about getting presents or eating extravagantly. It’s not about snow or trees or the Queen’s speech and the afternoon blockbuster. It isn’t even about getting drunk or hearing Slade playing from every available speaker. It’s about wrapping tinsel around your sunhat and getting the bus to the beach with a bag full of turkey sandwiches and party poppers. It’s about driving through the suburbs and seeing kids in the street playing with their presents in the sunshine. It’s about falling asleep on a dune and waking up to the laughter of two Korean girls because the inner lining of your swimming trunks has corroded. It’s about spending $3 and two hours writing fake Christmas cards to yourself from ‘Paul and Barry Chuckle’ and ‘all the lads in Radiohead’ and ‘That weather girl off Channel 9’ just to win a futile competition with your flatmate about how many cards each of you would receive. It’s about playing ‘Battleships’ with a pen and paper then bickering for over an hour because one of you cheated. It’s about stepping out of your normal reality for a couple of days, putting aside troubles and concerns and allowing yourself to be silly and carefree.

In short: no worries.