Thursday, December 24, 2009

Christmas Down Under



Author of 46 books Anna Jacobs tells us about how Christmas feels in the warmer climes...

Christmas in Western Australia is just a teeny bit different from Christmas in the UK. Definitely no snow! In fact, it’s going to be very hot on Christmas Day - probably a ‘century’ as we call it (100 degrees Fahrenheit).

We live on a marina development with water frontage and on Christmas Day in the early morning, before it gets really hot, Father Christmas comes round in a boat blasting out Christmas carols. He gives bags of sweets to kids who go rushing down to their families’ jetties and graciously accepts the odd bottle of chilled beer in return.




We’ll be having a barbecue in the evening but will stay indoors in the air conditioning for most of the day watching the boats go past outside. When it’s cooled down enough to be comfortable, we too will go outside. Few people here sit out in the full summer sun, which is enemy number one. We can recognise tourists from cooler countries because they ‘grill’ themselves to a nice bright red. Dangerous, that.

As we eat our barbecued food in the evening, we can look down the central ‘canal’ and see the fancy Christmas lights on the houses reflected in the water. It’s very pretty. Small boats chug past looking at the ‘illuminations’ and bringing wafts of music and laughter, while tourist boats bring larger numbers of revellers.

The only things we have to guard against are mosquitoes, which try to do their own feasting - on us.

That’s our Australian Christmas.

Anna Jacobs





Anna Jacobs: 'Yesterday's Girl' (pbk 1/08), ‘Freedom’s Land’ (pbk 7/09), 'Farewell to Lancashire' (hbk 7/09, Aust trade pbk 1/10), ‘Saving Willowbrook’ (pbk 11/09), ‘In Focus’ (hbk 11/09) http://www.annajacobs.com/

2 comments:

Jan Jones said...

Very interesting, Anna. I think the main thing is that all of us enjoy Christmas and remember what it stands for.

Happy festivities!

Deborah Carr (Debs) said...

Your Christmas sounds wonderful.

I love catching up with family who come over for the holidays from the mainland.