This Christmas will be my tenth in Australia. Hurray and ho ho ho. Every year I tell myself I’m starting to get the hang of my Australian Christmases. That there’s no need to compare them with the ones I used to know, those Christmases past, viewed through the snow-globe spectacles of nostalgia.
Growing up in frequently dismal late twentieth-century England, this time of year forced a welcome, crunching gear change on the national mood. People cheered up, or at least came to life.
As a kid, I was a sucker for the whole scene.
Not just the presents and chocolates, central to its appeal though they were, but all of it - the smell of pine needles, carol singers on the doorstep, the decorations and twinkly lights, the bumper edition of TV guides, sleeping over with the cousins we only saw a couple of extra-special times a year, stockings dangling at the end of our makeshift beds.
I swear there’d be church bells ringing on Christmas morning. Snow once or twice.
My tenth Christmas in Australia. In the bosom of my extended Vietnamese-Australian family. A lovely bosom it is, too, but one which does not necessarily hold as hallowed and central a place for the whole yuletide thang as mine.
I was a big fan of the festivities as a teenager, too. Though by then it was mainly about the booze. And the elevated chances of getting snogged at parties.
From early December onwards, it would be an unspoken rule in our mum’s house that any afternoon visitor over the age of sixteen would be offered a “proper drink” instead of the standard cup of tea. The place was never empty. Friends of mine sometimes formed a queue down the street of a weekend.
For better or worse, free of religious influence as my upbringing was, I grew up seeing Christmas as a massive deal, a time of year set apart from the rest, in which a singular mood prevails, and certain traditions hold.
They’re hard to let go of, those kinds of traditions, those occasions. Memories of them form the glue that holds together our childhoods. The foundation of who we are.
But when life rings the changes, when a person hooks up with a different family, through a relationship, and when that relationship takes them to the other side of the world, that person needs to loosen their grip on those traditions, and learn not to sulk too much about it, I’ve found.
My tenth Christmas in Australia. In the bosom of my extended Vietnamese-Australian family. A lovely bosom it is, too, but one which does not necessarily hold as hallowed and central a place for the whole yuletide thang as mine.
I remember the first of my Viet-Aussie Noels. I’d recently arrived down under and insisted on cooking a trimmings-loaded Christmas lunch and inviting the whole clan to my mother in-law’s place.
Back then, I didn’t yet appreciate the highly flexible approach to timekeeping favoured by my new kinsfolk. I watched in tight-lipped dismay, then, as various uncles, aunts and cousins rolled in from anywhere between half-past two and four o’ clock (the turkey was ready at half-one), to politely sample the withered, turgid remains of my feast, before clapping me on the shoulder and making congratulatory “yummy” noises.
Luckily they’d all brought far superior fish, pork and veggie dishes, and before long the leathery turkey carcass and petrified spuds and parsnips (I don’t even want to discuss the gravy) had been discreetly shifted from the table to make room. My mince pies were unanimously rejected.
I don’t want part of their traditional Christmas to be their old man complaining about things just not being “Christmasy enough” around here, every bloody year, moping about like some Dickensian ghost.
My attempts to get a game of Pictionary or charades going in the front room went similarly overlooked, our guests preferring to hang outdoors, what with all the bloody sunshine. And I was the only one to keep my paper hat on.
Two years later, we were parents. Two kids now, aged eight and six. Busy building formative memories of this stuff themselves, right now.
I don’t want part of their traditional Christmas to be their old man complaining about things just not being “Christmasy enough” around here, every bloody year, moping about like some Dickensian ghost. So little by little, I’ve learned to let it go.
Let it go. That was a good Christmas, a few years back, one I hope our daughter, four back then, will remember.
Frozen at the pictures on Boxing Day. It was a hot one, too, and a good way to spend it.
The day before we’d had all the family, plus some friends, over to our place for a barbecue, the centrepiece a roast turkey, surrounded by Vietnamese dishes, followed by Secret Santa and silly-buggers. There was a beautiful dragonfly buzzing around the house. Cognac. People kept their paper hats on.
That was the year I started to appreciate these new Christmases as a summer rite, the gateway to holidays which would reach their climax with the lunar new year, Tet celebrations bringing more sprawling family gatherings at the start of February.
If these are the Christmas traditions our Vietnamese-Anglo-Australian kids are learning to hold dear, then I’d say they’re doing alright.
And, yes, after ten years, I’m really starting to get the hang of them myself.
Though, come the night of the twenty-fifth, once those kids have sugar-crashed sufficiently to fall asleep, I’ll be straight on the skype to England.
Auld acquaintance, and all that.
