The colour of Christmas

Seasonal reflections on place

We woke to eight inches of fresh powder snow on Christmas morning. It coated everything outside. The deck. The snowmen we had built the day before. The car in the driveway. The driveway itself. It hung in the bare branches of the deciduous trees and weighed down the boughs of the conifers. Across the yard, the deep-pocketed tracks of deer broke the snow’s perfection while creating greater perfection. The kids, very young at the time, were wide-eyed with wonder. Lauren, just turned three, was convinced it had been Santa’s reindeer leaving the tracks through the snow. Toby, too old to still believe in Santa, went along with the idea.

We had travelled to Canada the week before Christmas. We slept off our jet lag in Vancouver and drove east on icy roads through sleet and snow to our friend’s house. The landscape was all shades of dark green, black and white – snow covered pine forests and icy rivers. The kids lay in the snow and made snow angels. We threw snowballs and built snowmen. Every house was decked with Christmas lights, which suddenly made sense to me. The days were so short, daylight limited to the hours from around nine in the morning until four in the afternoon; the Christmas lights added brightness and beauty to the many hours of darkness.

We opened presents by the fire with friends, with snow falling silently outside. A white Christmas. That magical, mythical idea.

To date, that Christmas in Canada more than a decade ago remains my only white Christmas, my only winter Christmas. I grew up in a house in rural Australia where Christmas was celebrated amongst heat and dust and flies, despite Bing Crosby crooning from the record player that he was dreaming of a white Christmas. Mum roasted turkey in the oven and the house grew hotter, the small portable Bonaire evaporative air conditioner inadequate to the task of the wheatbelt summer. We poured buckets of water into the slot on the back of the Bonaire and stood in front of it, our shirts lifted to feel the cool breeze on our bare bellies, us kids fighting for the prime position. We squirted each other with water pistols under the table as we ate roast turkey and after lunch the water fights escalated. By the time we jumped in the pool, we were already soaked.

Despite the heat, the trope of a white Christmas sits deeply in our culture, even in Australia where Christmas falls in mid-summer. Christmas cards feature snow-capped pine trees and snowmen. Fake frost is sprayed in windows and onto Christmas trees.

I loved our white Canadian Christmas. It was fun. Novel. Different. But something about it didn’t really feel like Christmas. Christmas to me is hot. Christmas is kids riding up the street on new bikes at first light of day long before six o’clock in the morning. It’s crowds of people at the beach barbecuing bacon and eggs for breakfast, new beach towels bright against the white sand. It’s hot days with sweat running in coloured rivulets from heads squeezed into the paper hats pulled from Christmas crackers. It’s games of backyard cricket and kids playing in the pool after lunch, while the uncles and aunts sleep off their over-indulgence. Christmas is heat and flies and too much sun; the threat of a late afternoon thunderstorm adding humidity to the dry air. The smell of sunscreen and barbecues. Tables groaning under the weight of salads and pavlova. It’s the potted native woolly bush we drag in from the garden, bigger and bushier this year than last (except for the lower branches where the dog chewed it in her early puppyhood). We decorate the woolly bush from the box of decorations we have accumulated over the years, and remember the friends who gave them to us.

More and more Christmas is things that come from here. A celebration of who we are, with a nod to the past and tradition. There are Christmas cards with Santa on the beach in board shorts and thongs, surrounding by iconic Australian animals, while others display traditional nativity scenes.

With the forecast here for Christmas Day to peak at a withering 42 degrees Celsius this year, there’s little option but to accept the heat and realise the only white in our Christmas is the beach sand. I think it might be time to lose the fake snow.

I’m taking a short break from my weekly posts here on Mostly Outside. I’ve been delighted and surprised by the response from readers over the past few months since I started this little venture. Deep gratitude to all my readers and special thanks to those of you who have sent me lovely messages of support via various channels. It means a lot.

See you in the New Year. In the meantime, Happy Christmas to you and yours.

Thanks for reading.

Jill