What are your Christmas Traditions?
South Australians love tradition. Whether it’s Showdown or Slowdown, the pigs in rundle mall or the Christmas Riverbank scenes every year outside that famous SA Brewery, it’s just not Christmas without the little things we do as a family. It’s not enough to have the festive decorations in the shopping malls and the high volume of Christmas specials on TV or the sentimental videos on your facebook page. It’s the Lights of Lobethal, the Christmas pageant and the familiar nuisances that trigger the memories that signal it’s truly, really Christmas.
For many years we paid far too much attention to the Northern hemisphere and locked ourselves in the kitchen with ovens blazing and pots boiling, cooking turkeys and puddings for hours on end whilst singing carols depicting snow bounds cottages and reindeer on every corner. With the oven on 180 degrees on a 43 degree day in the S.A summer, it’s a wonder we survived before air-conditioning. Even better if we get cheaper electricity.
Thankfully after putting up with dozens of truly annoying Ozzie Christmas songs over the years, our traditions have evolved to the colder cuts, BBQs and if you can afford the extra cost, a seafood spread. Australia has also seen many immigrants from equally heated countries that have turned our modern Christmas spread into the most glorious bowerbird’s feast with a myriad of flavours.
We also like to inflict our family traditions on potential family members or newcomers into our personal Christmas world. It is a rite of passage and a means to seek out, ”the keepers”. Sometimes it can be a real test of strength and endurance to gain entry onto prime seating at the dining table.
There will be tears, there may be arguments. There will be mess and spills and of course loads and loads of dishes, but we would not change it for quids. For without the whole catastrophe it would not be Christmas in South Australia.
So you might as well enjoy it all. If you’re lucky, one day your kids will be inflicting the same painful traditions on their kids.