The holiday season is creeping up on us. I can tell not only from the preposterous Christmas decorations adorning every store and shopping centre, tinsel glistening in the relentless sun, but also from the distinct feeling of grumpiness it brings me. Christmas? In thirty degree heat? Please.
The incessant ZING-ZING-ZING of the cicadas further add to my unpleasant mood. Don't get me wrong, it's a pleasantly quaint and holiday-like noise, but for Christmas? No thanks.
Facebook is riddled with all my northern hemisphere friends' photos of snowy back yards and red cheeked babies cutely wrapped up in woolly hats and scarves. No FAIR. I post photos of one hot palm tree riddled day after another, making it seem all marvellous, but in fact I bloody hate Christmas Down Under.
What's the point? You think it's all commercial back home, with the gifts and all, but here that's ALL it's about. Back home Christmas eve is a big deal. Special food, lots of it. Cartoons at 3pm. Everyone gets dressed up. There are traditions, things that must happen in a certain way at a certain time every year. Here in Australia we go and have lunch with the mother-in-law, which is always nice, but it's nothing SPECIAL. Nobody gets dressed up. There is no special food, just any old lunch. There are no traditions. No traditions! You even forget that it's Christmas, it's just another bright sunny day! How do people expect to have a proper Christmas celebration when they don't know or care what happens next, what time to do what?
My children will grow up thinking Christmas is all about summer holidays on the beach. It's a catastrophe.
Now I'm going to go out on the balcony and ask the magpies to shut up. Magpies are supposed to sound awful, not beautifully carolling like these creatures. Everything is upside down here.
No comments:
Post a Comment