CHRISTMAS IN AUSTRALIA
While it may be far from exact to say, with certain modern
philosophers, that climate creates and explains religions, it is
undoubtedly true that climate exercises a modifying effect upon certain
of the traditional observances of religion. Christmas is a case in
point. A man brought up in a northern clime associates the great
festival with the shortest day, and often with the sharpest weather.
Keen frost, deep snow, biting winds, roaring fires, bare gardens--these
are the framework of his Christmas. His thought transfers these wintry
conditions to the Holy Land, and he pictures the great Birth as having
occurred amidst the rigours of a northern winter. In this he is
probably wrong, but it is an error taught him by his native soil, and
from which often he has not sufficient knowledge or imagination to free
himself. Christmas and cold are to him synonymous.
When such a man crosses the seas and lives for a time in a tropical or
a sub-tropical climate, he finds it exceedingly difficult to adjust
himself to the new Christmas conditions. He finds his new Christmas so
utterly different from anything he has hitherto experienced, that the
observance of the festival smacks of unreality. It is now midsummer
with him; the days of the year are at their longest; the fireplaces
are filled with shavings, or discreetly hidden from view by painted
screens. The winds that blow come with fiery breath, the gardens
are blooming with summer flowers, and the orchards are filled with
fruit trees bearing their ripened produce. It requires a particularly
powerful imagination to surmount this actual Christmas and to replace
it by the traditional Christmas of the Old Land. And this kind of
imagination I do not possess.
It was an announcement in a large shop in Collins Street that first
made me aware of the proximity of Christmas: “Christmas Presents for
the Folks at Home--the last English mail in time for Christmas leaves
Melbourne on Nov. 19.” Thus ran the notice. And it struck me in a most
curious manner. The calendar distinctly pointed to Christmas, but
the weather and the gardens and the general surroundings whispered
mockingly: “This is nearing midsummer; the longest day is coming.
Christmas is a fiction--poor Englishman, there is no Christmas for you;
get out your duck suits and straw hat, and prepare for picnics and a
summer holiday.” And then I knew that I must walk by faith and not by
sight. For the first time in my life Christmas became empty of meaning.
All the sentiment of it vanished in a moment. I was alone, an actor
in the midst of a stage devoid of scenery. Every single “property”
of the great Christmas festival slowly accumulated during more than
forty years of life had been carried away in an instant. Blazing logs,
crackling fires, merry parties, mysterious stockings, frosty window
panes, keen air, snow-covered ground, and, above all, the waits--all
had gone, carried off by the magician who lives on this side of the
Equator.
And immediately Collins Street, for the moment, became a place of
exile. Its light turned to darkness, its charm fled. I turned to the
dear little woman at my side, and I saw that her face was wet with
tears.
We had to encounter a new kind of Christmas, and when the first shock
was over we settled to the idea, and determined to have a good time.
“But why not have the old and the new?” we said. If space had placed
13,000 miles between us and the Christmas we love so well, space
could not imprison our thoughts. So we determined to fly to the Old
Country and have an old-fashioned English Christmas. In a moment of
time we were in Gamage’s, showing the children the wonderful toys.
Then we shopped in Regent Street, and afterwards went to Maskelyne and
Devant’s, and later took the train into the country. We watched the
snow fall, and afterwards did some snowballing. We went to church, and
sang hymns and carols. And then came dinner and the family party. We
had a real good time, until the maid came and said: “There’s a north
wind, madam. I am going to close the windows.” And in a moment we were
back to our own Christmas, with the thermometer registering a little
over ninety degrees.
That north wind needs a word of explanation. It is the sirocco of
Victoria. Its hot breath is heralded by a day or a night of depression.
And when it arrives it is pitiless. Great clouds of dust come with
it, making life unbearable. Like a funeral pall the dust hangs over
everything. The skin becomes hot and dry, and everybody is out of
temper. It is useless to fight the north wind. The only thing to be
done is to run away from it by closing up the house and hermetically
sealing every window until the calamity is overpast. When the change
comes and the wind veers to the south, the relief is unspeakably
precious. The temperature will drop sometimes no fewer than thirty-five
degrees in half an hour. And then it is that influenza is likely to be
contracted. I said the thermometer registered ninety degrees; that was
when the north wind commenced to blow. But at midday the mercury had
mounted up to one hundred degrees in _the shade_. It was terrible. The
wind was as the breath of a fiery oven. The trees drooped, the flowers
hung lifeless upon their stalks, the grass of the lawn turned brown
in an hour, and the parched earth gaped and gasped. Over the entire
soil there quivered the fateful shimmer of the heat. Men and birds and
beasts were smitten with an overwhelming languor. It was the African
desert over again without relief. Little wonder, then, on the next
day, the journals reported fires in every direction. One single spark
sufficed to set an entire countryside on fire. Enormous crops of wheat,
ripe and ready to be reaped, were consumed by the flames in a single
morning. Useless to fight that raging furnace! Once the first fiery
tongue leapt from one stalk to another the whole area was doomed. In
one part of Victoria the bush and wheat-field fires devastated fifty
miles of country.
Thus our Christmas week opened. After that all Christmas ceremony was
obviously mere stage acting. Yet the form was rigorously observed.
Cards were exchanged and presents given. But _such_ presents! Take the
following alluring notices, for example, and let anyone imagine how
they struck an Englishman for the first time:
“New sunshades and parasols--splendid presents for Christmas.” “New
summer hats--just the thing for a Christmas present.” “Indian muslins,
just arrived--nothing better for a Christmas present.” It was all lost
upon me. For parasols I insisted upon reading “umbrellas”; for summer
hats, “furs and snow-boots”; for Indian muslins, “warm West of England
tweeds”--habits like mine cannot be broken in a moment. Of course,
there are toy fairs arranged for the youngsters, and there is even a
pretence of having Father Christmas in traditional garb. But what can
the white-bearded, frosted patriarch mean to children who have never
seen snow and whose patriarchs are sunburnt with long exposure to the
atmosphere in the hot Bush?
Most of all I miss the poultry display. Those long lines of turkeys and
geese killed a week in advance of Christmas, and exhibited in enticing
fashion until Christmas Eve!--we have none of that here. Imagine a
turkey being hung day after day for a week in an atmosphere like this!
There is one display, and that is on Christmas Eve, and even that one
is modest compared with what we have been accustomed to in the Old
Country. The birds are not killed until the last minute, hence they are
not so tender as English turkeys. It is mere slavery, this traditional
eating of turkey and plum-pudding at Christmas time; but the older folk
here permit themselves to be willing victims of custom. It is turkey
and plum-pudding at home; then it shall be that here, so they argue.
Climate and season protest against it, but in vain. One family of which
I heard drew down their blinds one Christmas, and lit the gas, and
ate their Christmas dinner under artificial light. It was the nearest
approach they could make to the Old Country way.
The younger generation is making the daring experiment of trying to
abandon the English Christmas, and to replace it by an Australian
festival. They argue that the transplanting of Northern customs to
these hot climes is ridiculous, and that whereas rich and heavy meals
may be in place at Christmastide in a climate where snow and frost are
found, they are utterly out of place here under azure-burning skies.
Some plants will not bear transplanting, and this is one of them. The
Yule-log and furs have never established themselves here at midsummer,
neither should the turkey and plum-pudding be permitted to do so. Hence
the young Australian is quietly dropping the traditional Christmas
fare, and substituting for it ices, cool drinks, and fruit. And as
peaches and apricots are now selling at one penny per pound, he finds
it advantageous, in more ways than one, to accept the natural boon of
the country rather than the artificial one of tradition.
A new Christmas is being born in which the old spirit is finding fresh
forms more consonant with the climate. God forbid that the old spirit
should ever die!
The great heat which ushered in our last Christmas week in Australia
was exceptionally trying during the hours of public worship. For many,
church-going was out of the question. People remained at home, seeking
coolness in darkened houses. Those who ventured out to church on the
Sunday morning had to travel in stifling railway carriages, or walk
over baking pavements. Within the church electric fans were moving,
together with a multitude of hand fans. At first it is distracting to
a preacher to speak to hundreds of people who are fanning themselves;
after a time, however, neither preacher nor audience takes any notice
of the motion. The feminine portion of the congregation is clad wholly
in white; the men affect light cashmeres, tweeds, or tussore silk.
Scarcely a black hat is seen. “Topees,” tropical helmets, and straws
are the order of the day. At night the church was full for a special
Christmas service. But everybody was languid. The hymns were sung
without the usual enthusiasm. The great heat had, for the time being,
ruined the organ, which remained silent. The poor preacher used up a
handkerchief or two in the effort to keep his face dry. Then it was
that the incongruity of keeping the traditional Christmas under the
Southern Cross was manifest in its fullest form. For the choir stood
and sang the carol, beginning:
“See amid the winter snow,”
and the thermometer registered over ninety degrees!
They sang again Rossetti’s beautiful song,
“In the bleak mid-winter,”
and the great organ solemnly protested that it had been ruined
temporarily by midsummer heat.
No! it is useless to try and link up a Northern Christmas with our
Australian climate. The effort miserably fails.
Christmas Day, however, compensated us for all the trying heat of the
previous week. There came one of those dramatic changes in temperature
for which Melbourne is noted. In one hour the glass fell nearly thirty
degrees. A “southerly buster” broke over us without warning, and when
the dust storm had passed people were glad to put on thicker clothing.
And so it came to pass that Christmas Day was chilly. The tempest broke
up the heat and gave us weather less than normal. With the cooler
temperature, goose and plum-pudding seemed more in place than in
former years. But how could there be an English Christmas Day when the
light remained until half-past eight? Before the kindly darkness came
on, the little people, who “at home” would have been busy with the
Christmas-tree, were yawning and inquiring after bed.
One can never forget these Christmas days under the Southern Cross, but
to experience the ancient sentiment of Christmas one must be in the
ancient home.