‘Tis the season
Posted on Saturday 31st October 2009
The usual early proliferation of Christmas products hit the shops here almost a month ago but, for obvious reasons, I had been ignoring the forthcoming holiday season.
Now our thoughts are turning to plans for how to celebrate the day. For the first time ever, we have elected to hold a party for the whole family. My grandmother, who hosts Christmas Day for our family in the UK, has set the bar very high, so we will have to really pull out all the stops.
Traditions are very different here, so the old fashioned turkey-and-trimmings will be replaced by seafood. And pavlova will stand in lieu of Christmas pudding. You might think that is sacrilege, but remembering that Decemver the 25th is in the middle of the sweltering Australian summer, makes hot stodgy food an unappealing option.
In previous years, the family here have taken the logical option of eating out for Christmas lunch. That way, someone else does all the food preparation, clearing up and washing up. But the city hotels and restaurants are now charging prohibitive amounts for that meal, so we have decided to do it ourselves.
I’m actually looking forward to the prospect. Maybe not the preparation aspect so much, but the chance to have all of those delicacies and indulgences is too tempting to miss out on. So, in the next few weeks or so we will start scoping out the Central Market and speciality food shops. Should be quite some day, though I guess a trip to the gym will definitely be on the cards for the following day.
Oh well, as they say, if you want to dance, you have to pay the fiddler.
When we first moved here from the UK (I was six at the time) we did the seafood bit at the beach for that first Xmas. Ever since then we’ve reverted to the trad English – turkey, pork and ham with all the trimmings – which means the air conditioning gets a workout given that it got a bit warm in central Qld during summer.
That first post-Xmas gym class is always the most difficult…