By Steven Cutts

Sat in a beer garden of our local pub, we’re huddled under one giant umbrella after being caught-out in the rain, which had appeared out of nowhere on Christmas Eve. The filters of our cigarettes wet from our rain soaked fingers. You could easily mistake this scene for any typical English beer garden, but instead this is our first Aussie Christmas… three pommes on the far side of the world and it seemed nothing could be more different.

So, I’ve only been here a few months, but I’ve noticed that similarities in the weather, is where the UK and Australia seem to end concerning Christmas. In the UK, the build-up to the festive season starts almost straight after summer. For instance, I’d go into a supermarket mid September, for a weekly shop and I’d already see bundles of wrapping paper, Christmas cards and decorations on the shelves. My heart sighs every time I see this premature sight. The annual three month foreplay of the build-up to Christmas, in my head I’d scream and like a war veteran, I’d run and duck for cover in the middle of all those shoppers down one of the aisles at the slightest hint of Christmas, protecting my head from the crash of marketing, songs, adverts, lights, festivities, banners that bombard me from all angles.

And this build-up happens ever so gradually, the volume and chatter of this madness turns up really, really slowly, and as the big day approaches the intensity is turned up harder and harsher, until the pain is so strong that by the time Christmas day has been and gone, I’m sat on the couch rocking back and forth in front of the Telly, shell-shocked and unable to hear anything except for the Christmas songs reverberating and bouncing inside my head, songs about ‘the snow falling, children playing’ and ‘having fun.’

And that’s the biggest irony, because Christmas time in the UK, is a time when you’re most likely to get bashed on a night out, in fact more than any other time of the year. Big groups of people going out throughout the holidays, after work, all at the same time and drinking for longer, which culminates in the most violent time of the year.  I recall one evening heading home in a cab on Christmas Eve. I saw this young lad walking against the traffic with a bloodied broken nose, I felt sorry for him because even though Christmas is just another day, it was Christmas after all and no one should have to deal with that.

Okay, so the UK and Australia may have more similarities than I am first aware of, but saying that, I didn’t see one Christmas tree in the window of a lounge, not one strand of tinsel and didn’t hear one Christmas pop-song. Where were the lights that people religiously fix to their houses every year? If you were to look at the UK from space you would see literally millions of flashing red chubby Santa’s flashing on and off. Alright, there were a few stars on Bourke Street and a huge colorful tree outside St Paul’s on Swanston, which looked like it should belong in the living room of the Marshmallow Man, but these were my only reminders of Christmas. Perhaps it would be different if I had a family over here and had more than four channels on my Telly and I actually went shopping occasionally. However, I didn’t have or do much more in the UK and over there I felt harassed as soon as the summer ended.

And as the summer is now underway in Australia, it feels like Christmas is a distant memory. This year we spent the day in a park north of Melbourne, with a load of food primed for the BBQ and a cooler bag full of beers that we aimed to get through before the ice melted. Sat on a sarong we were at the orphans Christmas listening to the hobo hi-fi, as unannounced strangers would sit with us.

As I look at the weather in the UK, the reminder of Christmas will most certainly be with them, as they’re locked into their worst winter in years. Remote towns and villages cut off, panic buying has started in some cities, schools closing down for a week, industry losing billions. The hangover of Christmas is still lingering while the shops get ready to fill shelves with chocolate eggs and over here I’m busy wondering if it ever happened at all.




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