A sappy Christmas post
A very common question I keep getting asked is what Christmas is like in Australia. This means that my creative streak has been given a run. Stories can range from ‘Oh no, we do actually get snow. It’s 40 degrees in the day and then goes down to -10 at night and we usually get a blizzard on Christmas Eve. The Kangaroos hate it!’ to ‘Who’s this guy in red? At Christmas we sacrifice a platypus to appease the sun gods and then give each other a different platypus innard depending on how close the person is to you.’
It’s been fun.
What people seem to not realise is that in Australia, everything about Christmas is practically the same… just hotter. What’s struck me is how similar Christmas is here. Growing up in a country where the temperature regularly gets up to 40 on Christmas Day, yet the pervading imagery around the place is of furs and snow. It has always felt a little wrong.
Being in the cold feels right at Christmas. Especially because this year mother nature put on a show and made it snow a week ago. I’m currently sitting in a room with a real tree, surrounded by traditional Christmas decorations and when I look out the back window there’s a blanket of white across the garden. It’s slightly magical. And the fact that I’ve been accepted into Em’s family like I’m one of them is something that makes it even better (I was just given my first chore. Emptying the bin on to the compost heap. I think that means I’m one of them now.).
One thing is missing, though. The fact that my family and friends from the past 24 odd years are approximately 9000 miles from here. It’s funny though, because I don’t get homesick. Everyone tells me it will hit me soon, but it never has. I think it’s mostly because I’m still slightly in denial that I’m so far away and thanks to technology I am never that far away from family and friends. In fact, Facebook is a great way to say hello to someone, which I’m sure is not what it’s meant for. Since I’ve been in the UK, I’ve rarely used it to stalk and have actually used it to communicate with people! It’s especially fun when I’m sitting at my desk at 9 in the morning talking to my inebriated friends at 8 at night.
I’ve gone off on a tangent. Back to what I was talking about.
The first time I’ve been here and felt slightly homesick (or maybe just nostalgic) was this morning. I was standing on the platform at Twickenham Station, freezing my hands off (we’re polite here. Plus I was wearing thermals so we weren’t worried about that) listening to my ipod. I’d just downloaded Tim Minchin’s ‘White Wine in the Sun’ and it damn near made me tear up. Mostly because it’s true. (cue cheese) I know that wherever I am in the world at Christmas, my dad, my brother, my sisters, my aunts and my uncles, my cousins, my gran(s) and my mum will be waiting for me in the sun.
So here I am, writing a sappy Christmas post to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and to let the people in Australia know that I miss them. All of them. Except for the ones in Doonside. And most of Western Australia. And Tasmania. Nobody misses Tasmania.
Merry Christmas.
