What is it about Christmas celebrations in a hot climate? We insist on clinging to the traditions of a colder place and serving up the bone-warming, steaming, fat-laden dishes designed to keep the winter chill at bay and a body alive until the first blessed shoots of spring emerged, months later. And we do this when the temperature outside is climbing above body heat; when the fires are raging on the hills and the beach beckons.



Here is a classic example of Christmasses from the past. Any resemblance to family members past and present is purely coincidental. Haven’t ALL Aussie families got memories along these lines?


We woke after sleeping in various unusual places, the result of a house literally bursting at the seams (I mean, have you seen the west wall? It’s falling off the house, there’s a gap you can see daylight through). The sounds of neck bones and other joints being cracked back into submission were drowned out by the clash of pans and clamour of hysterical activity from the kitchen. Breakfast? No chance. Christmas dinner preparations were underway.


Nobody could decide, months ago, WHICH hot meat to consume for Christmas dinner. Surprisingly, there was to be no traditional goose, although someone at the last minute bought a turkey buffet breast (‘it’s only the breast, it’s not huge or anything’) to supplement our repast. As if it would be in need of padding out!


So as one aunt rubbed salt into the scored skin of what looked like half a pig, another had her hand inserted so far up the chicken’s rear end you could see her fingers rippling under the skin, like some science fiction alien invader, as she prepared chicken galantine. To do this, you must remove the spine and rib cage through the neck, leaving the chook (Australian slang for chicken) intact so it can become a skin for more stuffing. Unfortunately, she chose a flavour-basted chook, the ones prepared by butchers with many small cuts made in the skin and flesh, through which ‘flavour’ is injected. And as she tried to separate the bones from the flesh of the raw chook, small rips kept appearing, which she stitched up with kitchen twine and an upholstery needle. The end result after stuffing looked less like a chook and more like one of Dr Frankenstein’s more novel experiments.

There was also a lamb roast, almost obligatory for any Australian celebration, although the teenage daughter had attacked it with a carving knife to leave deep gashes in which entire cloves of garlic and branches of rosemary had been stuffed. It now more resembled Birnam Wood trying to break into Dunsinane Castle, having been badly wounded in the process.


And the ham! It, too, was to be baked and glazed. The only problem was that although another ham had already been cut into for Christmas Eve supper, one of the uncles had decided to begin slicing the larger ham ‘because it made bigger slices’. And having finally wrested control back from the uncle, mother proceeded to begin the sad attempt of glazing and decorating an already butchered ham.
Then the inevitable — how can one small oven succeed in roasting seared pork with crackling; a gentle slow roasted galantine, a turkey buff breast that could have come from a pteranodon and a HUGE pre-loved ham with chunks of pineapple and glacé cherries mountaineering using toothpicks as crampons? Five roast dishes, three different temperatures, one domestic oven.


’That’s why we always start early,’ announced mother, desperate to regain control. ‘Dad — fire up the Weber!’


The Weber is thankfully family-sized. By this I mean a small family could live in it. So while Dad struggled to get the heat beads lit, Mum heated up the oven. ‘We’ll cook the chicken and the pork in the oven, the turkey and the lamb can go in the Weber, and the neighbours have kindly offered to cook the ham in their oven. But of course, this means they’re coming for Christmas dinner as well.’


’Do they know what they’re in for?’ I heard someone ask, to be silenced by a glare from Mother.


‘Don’t be so cynical — it’s Christmas!’


Somewhere in there, the kids were clamouring to open gifts. Dad’s comment of, ‘I need a drink!’ led to the champagne being opened early, still warm. The family crammed into the living room, sitting on any safe horizontal surface including the floor, with the surfaces unsafe for sitting on already laden with pre-lunch nibbles, to sustain us through the arduous task of gift opening.


Eventually after many yells, both aunts and Mother arrived apronned and sweaty from the kitchen, to be handed a glass of warm champagne. ‘Well, isn’t this nice!’ said mother, as she flopped onto the arm of the couch. ‘Hang on — the oven!’ as she disappeared kitchenward.


Once Mother was hog-tied to the couch with her own apron strings, we could begin. The youngest child of reading age was delegated to hand out the gifts, one at a time. Each gift had to be opened with the entire family breathless with anticipation, then the receiver would hold the gift up high and announce in rapt delight, ‘Look — socks!’ Then the snap-happy uncle who had bestowed the gift had to take a photo of the recipient wearing the socks, another photo of the recipient smiling, and then explain how to work his camera so someone could take a photo of him with the sock-wearing recipient.


And so it went. Every so often it was discovered that Mother or one of the aunts had slipped the leash and escaped back into the kitchen, hidden in the clouds of steam from the cauldron containing the pudding, being given the five hours of boiling it should have had months ago. Cries of, ‘Mum!’ or ‘Aunty! Get back out here!’ were frequent, interspersed with mutinous muttering about Uncle’s camera. Only by now, more cameras had emerged, with photos now being taken of every recipient, ‘…for Aunty June who cannot be with us today.’

At last the gifts had all been handed out and the tree now looked much barer, while the floor was littered with mingled gifts and paper.
Time to set the table.


Amazingly, the meat was all ready at the same time. Unfortunately, the family were not. As a result, the kitchen was full of dishes of meat in various stages of cooling to salmonella-loving temperatures while the vegetables were being cooked. The table had been decorated with a large vase of Christmas Bush, loving hand-crafted centrepieces at every place; several glasses per place and a Christmas cracker each. Candles burned with a fierce glow, adding even more to the sweatbox feel, now being enhanced by the pudding in its boiler. No room for the food! And also, no room for the children, who were to be seated at a complex array of play tables, card tables and an old door on trestles, all covered with a plastic tablecloth.


We will gloss over the bustle to and fro, of the undressing of the table sufficiently to allow some food to be placed there. At last people were seated and it was discovered that the platters could only contain small tokens of the magnificent roast denizens, all designed to be carved to an audience. So the family trooped into the kitchen, trampling small children underfoot, to watch the ceremonial carving of the roast pork, the turkey buff breast, the chicken galantine which now filled an entire baking dish on its own and the massacred lamb, its rosemary branches now seared and blackened as if by a bushfire. We had a sense of anticlimax as we went back to the dining table, each carrying a plate loaded in the kitchen. We carefully arranged ourselves so we could all sit AND reach the table somewhere, when the neighbours arrived, carefully balancing the enormous ham, the cherries and pineapple barely holding on. ‘That pesky parrot next door was out loose, it attacked us for the fruit as we came round here. Where will we put it?’ So again, we had to troop out to the kitchen to watch the magnificent ham being carved.


‘We didn’t want to arrive empty-handed, so we went out and bought some barbecued chicken,’ they explained, as they produced still more food.


We rearranged ourselves once more to accommodate the neighbours, now even more a feat of Tetris than before.


‘Hang on! I’ve got to get a photo of this!’ Uncle jumped up, followed by several other family members each with their camera.


‘Hold on, we can’t all take photos at the same time — who will be in the picture?’ Uncle complained. So everybody but Uncle sat down again while he took the photo. But trying to get a photo of so many hungry people, and have ALL of them with eyes open, facing the camera and smiling – not easy. At last it was achieved. Then the next person had to take their photo. And the next. Then Uncle noted, ‘You know — in every photo of Christmas tables, I’m never in the photo…’ so the neighbour kindly offered to take photos for all the camera-owners who were feeling left out. It took some time to give the neighbour a crash course in how to operate a dozen different cameras and even longer to again get photos where everybody was smiling, eyes open.



At last it was done.


‘Time to pull the crackers, everybody!’

Again, forks poised to mouths were put back on the plates. We picked up our crackers, and once more there was some fiddling while we arranged ourselves under Aunty’s direction. It appeared to be an ancient, mystic family ritual that required crackers to all be pulled at the same time, with hands crossed over so we all looked like strait-jacketed asylum inmates. Of course, the resemblance was increasing every minute.


At last, crackers pulled to satisfaction, we had to put on the hats. Some of these were small enough to slide over the baby’s wrist while others could have been worn as a hula skirt by Fat Bastard.


Uncle took photos of everybody wearing their hats. This was much quicker now, because eyes rolling to the ceiling and middle fingers hoisted skywards now were seen as acceptable. This was the informal shot.


At last, we began to eat.


‘My meat’s cold,’ remarked Dad. ‘Hey, does anybody else want their plate warmed up?’ He carefully clambered out from his spot, unseating two people to each side of him in the process, who then figured that as long as THEY were up, they may as well heat theirs up, too. And the process continued around the table, like a nuclear chain reaction.


‘Don’t wait for us, just start.’ Dad yelled through the steam from the kitchen, which meant that OF COURSE we all had to wait. 
By now the sun was low on the horizon, lunch was still allegedly underway and the children were, to put it mildly, getting restless. ‘Mum, Warwick is poking holes in the plastic tablecloth.’

‘I am not! It was you! Besides, they’re disposable anyway…’

The tablecloth was duly inspected, to find that ALL the kids had been quietly poking holes in the edge, perhaps out of hunger and sheer frustration.
 At last the plate heaters returned and again, carefully eased back into their seats like contortionists. At which point Mum leaned across to Uncle and said, ‘Are you SURE you have enough food there? You didn’t get any of the turkey, and we got it for you especially.’


Uncle, to his credit, said he’d get turkey for his second helpings. Mother meanwhile was glaring around the table to make sure none of us were about to starve.


Just then the timer went off somewhere in the foggy kitchen. ‘The pudding’s done!’ Mother shrieked, knocking over two more relatives precariously poised on either side of her.


‘It will keep! Sit down!’ and the adult children on either side of her dragged her down into her chair and helped up the fallen relatives.
People at last began to eat, to the murmured litany of mother complaining, ‘I don’t know why you treat me with such disrespect, I’ve been slaving away in the kitchen all day and what thanks do I get…’


Every dish had to be tasted, by everybody present. All the children complained that the food was too spiced, too sweet, too different and please can we leave the table? Sweat streamed down every face, vast amounts of fat and carbs were consumed, belts were loosened and everybody insisted, ‘Next year we’ll just have seafood and salad!’

And it was like this every year.