Christmas Traditions

Gareth: In Australia, do you go for the fake snow and bringing the traditional winter Christmas to Australia?

Beth: It depends on the family. A lot of people with British roots do. They’ll decorate their houses with cotton wool for snow and insist on having the very heavy Christmas lunch with roast turkey and pudding and so on. But nowadays most families prefer a barbecue outside because it’s summer. It makes more sense.

Michael: Decorating houses in America is big business now. I think it’s become a competition to see who can use the most lights. When we were living in America I remember seeing on the news the traffic that would block certain streets because people would come down to see this one house because it had Santa on the roof and a manger on the roof of the garage. Elves and reindeer all over the lawn. And lights galore. And all the neighbors would complain because the street was too noisy because everyone was coming to look at it.

Jacy: That’s true because decorating your house with Christmas lights is huge in America. And going to look at them is very popular as well. But I have to say it is nice to just be driving down the street and see all the prettily lit houses.

Alex: Some families do the same in England but if they have too many lights, the neighbours look down on them.

Gareth: With us it’s the debate whether you have one of those live Christmas trees or an artificial one. We always go for the live one but they drop needles on the floor and you stand in them for months afterwards.

Michael: We never had a live tree in our house, always an artificial tree.

Jacy: Wow, we never had an artificial tree, always had a live tree.

Beth: We had a live tree, literally living. It was in a big pot which we would move inside and decorate it for Christmas and then move it outside again.

Jacy: How many years did you have the same tree?

Beth: I think my mum still may have it. Which means it would be about twenty years old.

Gareth: And twenty metres tall maybe.

Beth: No, it’s some species of native Australian pine, which doesn’t grow very big.

Gareth: We did that one year. My father planted it in the garden and it’s now as tall as the house. Needless to say we can’t fit it indoors.

Alex: My parents tried to do the same thing but each year it died. So they gave up after a few years. We still have a real one but it’s bought each year.

Jacy: Mary? Real tree or artificial tree?

Mary: Always real. And lots of tinsel! I went to visit Czech friends for Christmas the first year I was here. And it was actually their cottage, and they had the Christmas tree suspended from the ceiling and I thought, wow, this is a really interesting Czech tradition. I’ve got to find out about this. So I asked them and they said no, the dog eats the bottom of the ornaments so we had to hang the tree up.

Mary: Anyway, how do you spend Christmas day?

Gareth: Well in England it’s very similar to South Africa. We get ready and very excited on Christmas Eve and all the children send their letters to Father Christmas by burning them up the chimney and then they all wake up at about four o’clock in the morning and wake the whole family and open their presents. Then you have Christmas dinner at lunchtime.

Beth: There’s the same tradition in Australia, though some parents to pacify their children will let them open one gift on the 24th. Or at least we were allowed to.

Michael: We were allowed to as well.

Jacy: We had one gift we could open on the 24th.

Michael: Our parents forced us to go to church on Christmas Eve.

Beth: Likewise

Gareth: And when you went to church on Christmas Eve was that at midnight mass or an earlier mass?

Michael: I wasn’t Catholic so it was what we call a candlelight service. They did it at 10 o’clock. At one point they turned out all the lights and everyone had candles and sang the “Silent Night” song. And when I was old enough, I changed that tradition from going to church to staying at home and watching Lethal Weapon.

Gareth: The first one?

Michael: Yes, it takes place at Christmas.

Gareth: That wasn’t the one when the guy gets stuck on the toilet, was it?

Michael: No, that was Lethal Weapon 2.

Alex: On Christmas Eve there’s a carols service broadcast from King’s College Cambridge, which is quite popular.

Beth: We have something called Carols by Candlelight about a week before Christmas. People gather in parks and sing Christmas carols, holding candles. It’s become quite a commercial event now that television stations televise it and there are celebrities but it started as something quite small scale and community-oriented about 30 years ago and many suburbs still do it this way.

Gareth: In the UK we always have a speech from the Queen at 3 o’clock on Christmas Day when she says very little in a very posh voice. Is there similar address in Australia? You have the same queen.

Beth: It’s probably televised but I’ve never watched it.

Mary: Do you stand up and salute the television or the radio?

Gareth: No, not all. We’re very informal with our royal family. We normally leave the table in time to watch her quickly before watching Top of the Pops, the music program as it used to be called.

Michael: American culture doesn’t have a king or queen, but it has basketball on Christmas Day. There’s Christmas Day NBA. There are traditional basketball games on Christmas Day.

Gareth: And we have football in the football league.

Jacy and Michael: On Christmas Day?

Gareth: On Boxing Day.

Michael: Americans have no clue as to what Boxing Day is.

Gareth: My understanding was that it was when richer people would box up presents and give them to the poorer people.

Mary: What do you actually do then?

Gareth: Well it’s normally a day for recovering, eating yet more turkey, because they’re quite big birds, and in our family it was normally a day for visiting relatives. You’d have Christmas Day with the very close family and then you’d go off and visit relatives on Boxing Day.

Alex: In my family, my parents would invite their friends, maybe 12 or 14 people, around and usually enjoyed it more than Christmas Day itself.

Jacy: What about in Australia…?

Beth: We have the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, which is a big tradition and many families sit down and watch that on television or go to see the start of the race in Sydney Harbour. It’s quite spectacular!

Michael: In our family, it was the day you played with our toys.

Gareth: Does this mean that in the states Boxing Day isn’t a holiday?

Michael: It’s non-existent in the states.

Mary: Only the 24th and the 25th, right?

Jacy: I don’t even think the 24th is a holiday. But traditionally not very many people work on the 24th. The 25th is the actual holiday.

Mary: And what do you do in the Czech Republic? Do you celebrate it on December 25th or on December 24th?

Gareth: I usually have two Christmasses. I celebrate the Czech one on the 24th with Czech people and on the 25th I have the traditional turkey around my place.

Mary: Do you cook your own turkey?

Gareth: Not a whole turkey, I’m quite lazy. I just buy some turkey breasts from Tescos, so I cook a turkey breast.

Mary: What else do you have besides turkey?

Gareth: Now you’re talking. We have some roast potatoes, maybe some roast parsnips as well, brussel sprouts, which you either love them or hate them, bacon cooked over the turkey, and probably some other sort of vegetable, some carrots, maybe some peas, and then for dessert we have some Christmas pudding, which is a very rich and heavy fruit based pudding with custard in my family though I believe some people have it with brandy butter. What do you have in the States? I understand you eat your turkey at least a month earlier.

Mary: That’s right we can’t wait. We’re just like the children on Christmas Eve. So we have our turkey on Thanksgiving, which is the last Thursday in November, I think. And then different families have different foods on Christmas Day. A lot of families have ham.

Michael: I don’t think there’s one traditional American Christmas meal. We sometimes had lasagna, sometimes chicken, sometimes ham. Whatever my mom felt like cooking.

Jacy: We always had ham, au gratin potatoes, which are sliced potatoes with seasonings and little cheese, salad and usually broccoli. For desert it was always the Christmas cookies we had made.

Gareth: Has anyone experienced the Czech Christmas carp?

All: Yes

Gareth: Should we take a vote on how many like the carp and how many don’t?

Beth: Actually, it’s considered a pest in Australia as it causes lots of problems for all the excellent native fish in our rivers.

Jacy: That’s interesting.

Beth: My father in law’s a fisherman, so we’re always being given carp and have a freezer full of carp. I admit it’s not my favourite fish, but I don’t mind it.

Mary: I think it depends on how it’s cooked. If it’s really fried I can hardly eat it. It’s too greasy. But if it’s baked it can be quite tasty.

Gareth: I like the potato salad.

Michael: Me too

Jacy: I like potato salad as well.

Mary: It’s hard to dislike potato salad.

Alex: And those little sweets called bee-hives. They’re delicious.

Gareth: But nothing beats the taste of the traditional English pudding.

NOTE:

Top of the Pops is a long-running music chart show on BBC television (http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp/). They always used to have a Christmas Day special, as the Christmas number one song is the most coveted of the year.