The north wind is tossing the leaves.
The red dust is over the town;
The sparrows are under the eaves,
And the grass in the paddock is brown...
The red dust is less common these days, but 15 years back, a dust storm near Kati Thanda (we still called it Lake Eyre back then) gave the small boy, now of advanced middle age, this view from his study window:
The small boy, raised on English literature, suddenly realised that Christmas is not about snow and robins, not where he lived. He found a new sense of Australlianness.
These days, we find lawn ornaments like this one that you can see on the right. When these appear in early December, we know what is coming.
To me now, the harbingers of Christmas, aside from lawn decorations are fading jacarandas, fruit bats passing in the dusk as I look out that same study window (you can see them above), cicadas shrilling—and that song.
Because I have been working on a large work of history this year, I have drawn on my files to look at how we invading Australians have moulded Christmas to meet our conditions. The child in the illustration below is probably a new arrival. Emus are not that dangerous, but they can hurt, and are best avoided. In the late 19th century, this was less obvious.
Christmas: 1797
David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol 2, 51.
There were at this
time in the town of Sydney three schools for the education of children; and
this being the period of their breaking-up for the Christmas holidays, the governor was gratified with the sight of
102 clean and decently dressed children, who came with their several masters
and mistresses, and in form paid their respects to his excellency, who examined
the progress of the elder scholars in writing, specimens of which he kept for
the purpose of comparing with those which they should present to him on the
following Christmas.
Christmas: 1813
George Evans’s Journal of his journey to the Bathurst Plains, entry for Christmas Day, from Ernest Scott (ed.),
Australian Discovery.
The day is so hott
the Fish will not bite; it is the only time they have missed; therefore I opened
my tin case of Roasted Beef.
Maybe this man is trying to catch an Aussie Christmas dinner of snake? This is how we frighten off dauntful wannabe immigrants, by showing pics like the one above. My guess is that it is a python,
The shot below shows a 2-metre python which caused me to block traffic on a tourist road, 9 km from the heart of a city of 5 million people, earlier this year. We don't kill our snakes any more: we guard them, especially when they are crossing a road.
Christmas became a time for merry-making, and dare I say it, drunkenness.
Christmas: c. 1842
Louise Ann Meredith (Mrs Charles Meredith), Notes and Sketches of New South Wales, 1844,
128.
The prevailing vice
of drunkenness among the lower orders is perhaps more resolutely practised at
this season than any other. I have heard of a Christmas-day party being assembled, and awaiting the announcement
of dinner as long as patience would endure; then ringing the bell, but without
reply; and on the hostess proceeding to the kitchen, finding every servant
either gone out or rendered incapable of moving, the intended feast being
meanwhile burned to ashes. Nor is this by any means a rare occurrence; as the
crowded police-office can bear ample testimony.
Christmas: 1855
Elizabeth Ramsay-Laye, Social Life and Manners in Australia, 160.
We rowed down the
river to church, as we thought the cool shade of the spreading trees
overhanging the water would be pleasant, and in the evening some friends joined
us in endeavouring, by the help of roast beef, plum pudding, and mince pies, to
cheat ourselves into the belief that it was Christmas day, while the heat of
the atmosphere compelled us to put our handkerchiefs to our faces continually
in a very unaristocratic fashion.
Below, George French Angas shows people by a river, with far more clothes on than they need (see later for how they should have been attired). I can see six bottles for eight adults...
Christmas: 1861
 |
| William Woolls |
The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 December 1861, 8. The writer was the Rev. William Woolls, an excellent but now little-known colonial botanist. He wrote extensively for the SMH as WW. Most of his articles in Trove have been tagged with his name, mainly by the present writer.
The genus Ceratopetalum is so called from the horn-like petals of some species. C. gummiferum is the Christmas bush of the colonists, and is well worthy of the name. Dr Bennett, in his “Gatherings of a Naturalist,” remarks that “in every instance in which an attempt has been made to remove it, the tree has perished, nor have seeds succeeded except such as have been self sown.”
Below is a picture of Christmas Bush, from Bennett's book.
Christmas: 1873
Peter Egerton Warburton, Manuscript journal
(from a typed transcript of the original journal), kept as leader of Messrs.
Elder and Hughes’s Exploring Party.
25 December 1873:
We cannot but draw a mental picture of our friends in Adelaide sitting down to
their Christmas dinner, whilst we
lay weltering on the ground starving, and should be thankful to have the
pickings of any pig’s trough…Our last Christmas at Alice Springs was miserable
enough, as we then thought, but the present one beats it out and out.
Ernest Giles was British-born, but he fitted in. He was not far from Warburton on this Christmas day.
Christmas: 1873
Ernest Giles, Australia Twice Traversed, 25 December 1873.
Christmas had been
slightly anticipated by Gibson, who said he had made and cooked a Christmas
pudding, and that it was now ready for the table. We therefore had it for
dinner, and did ample justice to Gibson’s cookery. They had also shot several
rock-wallabies, which abound here. They are capital eating, especially when
fried; then they have a great resemblance to mutton.
Christmas: 1882
Richard Twopeny, Town Life in Australia, ‘Amusements’.
Christmas Day falling on Monday in 1882, business did not begin again till Wednesday. So on Friday everybody had to lay in their stock of bread and meat to last till Wednesday morning. In wholesale business, in the professions and amongst the working-classes, the whole week from Christmas Eve to the 2nd of January is practically a holiday. It is quite useless to attempt to do any business during that period.
Christmas: 1893
Clarence and Richmond Examiner (Grafton), 24 June 1893, 3.
Several kinds of beetle larvae of the Lamellicorn tribe,
including the so-called Christmas beetle
and several cockchafers, were found at the roots of the cane, but in no cases
were they found numerous or destructive.
Christmas: 1896
The Advertiser, 9 January 1896, 6.
I believe at Hannan’s on Christmas Day one publican took no less a sum than £500—a Christmas box he will have reason to remember. Truly the hotels appear the best dividend-paying concerns that have up to date been discovered in West Australia.
Christmas: 1901
Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney), 16 February 1901, 40.
…when Christmas time came round we would always have a box ready with sugar in it, into which we would pop those pretty Christmas beetles which we found on the bushes and thistles.
Christmas: 1913
Newcastle
Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, 8 December 1913, 5.
FOR AFTERNOON TEA
ON THE LAWN, GET
ARNOTT’S CHRISTMAS CAKES.
THEY ARE THE BEST,
Order from your Grocer Early.
Christmas: 1931
Miles Franklin, Old Blastus of Bandicoot, chapter 2.
“Never mind,
Arthur. You hill the potatoes as Father told you and I’ll see that you get a Christmas present too,” said Mother.
“Aw, a pair of Blucher boots I suppose, w’en me toes are acting potatoes outer
these. Why can’t I have me photer taken too?”
Christmas: 1933
News
(Adelaide), 7 December 1933, 15.
Adelaide’s
kindergartens are busily preparing their Christmas
tree parties. These little festivities are the red letter day of the years for
the little people who go to “kindy.” Each kindergarten is managing to strike a
delightfully festive note in the invitations it has issued.
Christmas: 1952
The
Inverell Times (NSW), 29 December 1952, 4.
Many Inverell
residents described the Christmas “rush”
period as the “biggest and longest” they could remember. One man who has lived
here all his life said the main streets on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were “like
Pitt Street, and too much for him.”
Christmas: 1971
The
Canberra Times. 17 December 1971, 12.
The crowd will get
together on Sunday night at a Christmas
party in the gallery’s garden where the hosts will be serving “nibblies and
wine”.
With luck, our Christmas morning will kick off like this, unless it rains, as it sometimes does.
But if it does rain, we will walk out in it, just keeping a hand over the wine glass. We don't care where the water goes, so long as it misses the wine.
And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,
"I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine."
Peter read those lines out and then he gave a little grunt,
I don't care where the beer goes if it doesn't go down my front.
