Still Thinking – Christmas in Australia

I had ten Christmases in Canada and only one was a white Christmas. We lived in Hamilton Ontario which is at the southern tip of Lake Ontario and the area doesn’t get as much snow as parts further north. On average the snow would arrive in our neighbourhood in late November, then melt by early December and not return until early January.  So white Christmases were few and far between.

Coming from the southern hemisphere I was often asked is we celebrated Christmas in our winter, in July.  Canadians found it difficult to imagine Christmas lights, decorations and roast turkeys happening in the summer.  When I told them that our shopping centres (malls) were decorated with fake snow (cotton wool) reindeers and overweight and overdressed Santas and that even the tree we decorate was not native to Australia but imported from north climes, they were bemused –as some us are today.  I tried to redeem our southern hemisphere summer Christmas celebration by telling them that we do have “shrimp on the barbie” (prawns) cold meats and salads often served outside on Christmas Day and that sometimes Santa even arrives on a surfboard!

When I have thought about our Christmas traditions, I realize that almost of them come from the northern hemisphere and perhaps the only local Christmas custom we have is Carol’s by Candlelight which has to be outside, on a warm summer evening to be successful.  Christmas traditions generally are a melting pot of historical-cultural-religious, symbols, customs and traditions that are transported one culture and one country to another and that’s probably a good thing.

Christmas celebrations imported from elsewhere are part of a larger question about Christianity in Australia.  In the 1970s, when I was a theological student it was popular to talk about an emerging “Gumleaf Theology” which was an attempt to indigenize the unique expression of Christian faith in this corner of our world.  It has never really succeeded.  Our love firstly, of all things British and European and more recently all things American, has seen the flow of traditions, customs and ideas move in one direction.  Nevertheless, I suspect the key to having meaningful sacred customs and traditions is to not just adopt them, but rather we adapt them to the local needs and conditions.  The playwright William Somerset Maugham said, “Tradition is a guide and not a jailer,” and even a religious traditionalist like T.S.Eliot wrote “A tradition without intelligence is not worth having.”

Of course what’s most important is to revisit the original story of the nativity and draw from it those meanings, images and symbols that resinate with our experience of Christian faith on our continent.  Remember the environment surrounding Jesus’ birth in Palestine was closer to Australia conditions than it was to northern Europe or Scandinavia.  And we Australians should know something about sheep and shepherds albeit a little less romanticised than most Christmas scenes. However, what is significant is to remind ourselves and our culture that this baby was born in a humble state, attended by those who loved and honoured him and that he grew to be a man beyond measure, whose life and teaching transformed the ancient world and can transform both our culture and the human heart.  But for that to happen we must take seriously this Holy and sacred story of God with us, revealed in this small human life and celebrated every year at Christmastime.

Christopher