In search of a Christmas tradition

My youngest son asked whether he’d be get­ting a Christ­mas sack at the end of his bed on Christ­mas morn­ing.
Since he no longer believes in Santa, he knows that his mother and father will be the ones tip-toeing to his bed in the dead of night to deposit trea­sure in a lumpy pil­low­case.
Even so, there’s an expec­ta­tion. “It’s our tra­di­tion, isn’t it?” he said.
It made me think. What sort of tra­di­tions was I pass­ing on? What sort of mem­o­ries would he have about Christ­mas? I know I’ve failed dis­mally to even attempt to bake a tra­di­tional Christ­mas cake, never mind a Christ­mas pie. A Martha Stew­art, I am clearly not.
It’s not that I don’t have Christ­mas mem­o­ries myself. Every year, in my own home, a month or so prior to Christ­mas, there would be a boiled fruit cake bub­bling on the stove – the deli­cious aroma of spices, dried fruit min­gling with a gen­er­ous dol­lop of brandy. The fact that the cake was some­times burnt a tad on top, did noth­ing to deter my mother – she per­se­vered with her tra­di­tion for years. She even man­aged the marzi­pan icing. Not for her shop-bought Christ­mas pies either – she even made her own pas­try – crumbly yes, but totally her own.
Per­haps a deter­rent is that I don’t like eat­ing Christ­mas cake. The same goes for mince pies. I have an aver­sion to orange peel which seems to be a vital ingre­di­ent in any­thing Chris­massy.
I remem­ber eat­ing Christ­mas pud­ding, but only for the money hid­den therein.
There’s a fran­tic sense that I’m let­ting tra­di­tions slip away.
In a vague effort to ignore the humid­ity and heat, and wel­come the fes­tive sea­son, I decided to make use of the scorch­ing weather and string colour­ful solar lights on a gum tree at the entrance to our home. The lights work sur­pris­ingly well, and I pride myself in the fact that they are not using up one jot of elec­tric­ity. The Aussie sun is enough to keep them going all night.
We have a tree – not real, but with a fairly con­vinc­ing foliage and a smat­ter­ing of fake snow on the tips. This year, my daugh­ter chose to go all upmar­ket on us and avoided all the home­made dec­o­ra­tions and dol­lar shop offer­ings – opt­ing instead for classy baubles. So we have a posh tree this year – and a new string of lights that actu­ally works.
What I need to lose, is the Euro­pean pic­ture post­card in my head that sings snow, fir trees, a real Christ­mas tree, crack­ling fire fes­tooned with red vel­vet rib­bon inter­spersed with real holly – and of course, the oblig­a­tory sump­tu­ous Christ­mas stock­ings styl­ishly dan­gling from the lin­tel.
An Aussie Christ­mas is a tad dif­fer­ent and the sooner I embrace it in all its sweaty, sticky glory, the bet­ter.
A tra­di­tion I will fol­low is to escape the morn­ing may­hem and heat and attend another evening church ser­vice.
And next year, I will go one step fur­ther. I will fol­low my neigh­bour who left home at 4.30am this morn­ing to be first in line for fresh off the boat seafood at Brisbane’s wharf.
As it turned out, he was not the only early bird – a queue over a hun­dred metres long greeted him at 5am and he waited 45 min­utes to snare his booty – fresh crabs and prawns.
Those will be tossed on the bar­bie, no doubt, with lash­ings of gar­lic and but­ter – washed down with a crisp Ries­ling and plenty of ice cold beer.
Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Wher­ever you are, I wish you a blessed Christ­mas – one that incor­po­rates the true mean­ing of Christ­mas – the Christ, in ‘mas’ – and that, I sup­pose is the tra­di­tion that mat­ters most.

© Lois Nicholls 2009