Originally published in Pearson's Weekly (C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.) vol.1 #23 (27 Dec 1890).
The difference between a British and an Australian Christmas is the difference between a British December and a British June; for December in the Antipodes is the height of summer. The hottest months are January and February, as with us they are July and August; but an Australian December is sufficiently warm to leave no doubt about the presence of summer.
Thus a colonial sees the year pass out under strangely altered conditions from those to which we are accustomed in England. Yet it is only the new-comer recently settled in a southern home who feels the difference; others have grown used to it, or have been born to it, and probably like it. The "new chum," however, cannot be expected to like it all at once; and if he strives to keep his Christmas in memory of Christmases bygone in his dear motherland, he will have a hard struggle with circumstances.
There is no familiar scene on which the eye may alight; there is no familiar sound for the ear to catch. Impossible to conceive a Christmas with Rotten Row in full swing, with Henley, the Eton and Harrow match, and Goodwood in immediate prospect. So neither can the unaccustomed mind conceive a Christmas amid all the moving excitement and bustle of the summer exodus which 1s imminent at this season in Australia.
There Christmas is the holiday season. At Christmas the boys come home from school for their Midsummer holidays; at Christmas clerks get off for their fortnight's respite; at Christmas the law courts take a vacation; anyone who is contemplating a holiday at all takes it at Christmas. It is not, therefore, a season of reunion, but rather one of dispersion in search of enjoyment.
There are many methods of Christmas holiday-making in Australia. You may visit a watering-place (and of watering-places there are more than one in each colony), though, as a rule, the seaside is not so much in favour at this time as in the autumn. You may take a tour through other colonies—that is, you may "go abroad." If you are a Victorian, you may visit New Zealand or New South Wales; if you are a New Zealander, you may visit Australia. The two favourite colonies for "foreign" tourists are Tasmania and New Zealand, which are more attractive in climate and scenery than the great continent itself.
But pleasure-seekers need not go beyond their own borders, for in each colony there is plenty to see, and plenty also to look for. There are recognised "sights," and you go in search of them in the usual way—by railway, coach, and steamer. But there are also many unbeaten tracks, unknown even to shepherds, and prospectors, and certainly never traversed by globe-trotters and other tourists. The enterprising Australian has almost an infinity of choice, for the great unknown lies before him, stretching from his very gates.
Picnics are the favourite pleasure in Australia, where out-of-door life is so prolonged and so attractive. To be "up country" at a Christmas picnic is bewildering enough to the "new chum." The dark thick bush, with its unbroken solitude, marred now by a merry gathering within its borders, the gay chattering parrots, the roaring river, the snow-capped mountain, the bright flash of summer dresses, the cool shadow of mushroom hats, the parching grass dying into yellow underfoot—all are strangely unfamiliar, and render it difficult to realise that Christmas is here.
Gone are all the time-honoured festivities, gone are all the old associations. Last night was Christmas Eve, and you spent it fanning yourself in an armchair under the coolest of verandahs.
You did not stand at midnight on the garden path listening to the bells ringing in the "happy marn," till the keen frost-laden wind drove you in again to the fire. No; at midnight you were in bed, trying to dodge the mosquitoes.
It is true that to-day cold turkey has been brought to the picnic; but no one will touch it, the weather is too hot for appetite, and the merest suggestion of plum-pudding made to your neighbour sends a shiver through him.
Yet your Old-World fancies need not be wholly upset, for in some points desperate efforts are made to preserve the old British traditions. And about these efforts and that desperation an undeniable pathos clings at times. You may find vigil services in many churches on Christmas Eve, and you may hear the Christmas carols sun by choir-boys half buried in festoons of roses and all the rich summer blossoms.
Many families strive to keep themselves together until after Christmas, when they separate and depart on their several ways. On Christmas Eve the children gather round the snapdragon-bowl, and burn their fingers much as they do "at home." Dancing, too, is as rife as an amusement can be, and is practised in no way less assiduously by reason of the midsummer heat.
Out on the stations the spasmodic music of the concertina and the red lights in the barn announce to the wayfarer that the "hands" are holding high revelry. Fairly successful attempts to introduce the mistletoe have even been known. There is in New Zealand a berry on the black birch which is popularly termed the mistletoe, and this has been made to serve the purpose of the genuine article.