The Scent Of Christmas

I was musing over the weekend, during the long stretches of time between customers, about the true meaning of my Christmas, and the innocence of a simpler time.

Remember, I'm Jewish, so your traditional "Offspring of God born to Virgin in Manger because the King David was booked out for a gynacologists convention" thing doesn't hold much sway with me, though I have to say it's a more compelling story than the "lamp in the Temple burned for eight days when there was only enough oil in the lamp for one" Hannukah story, which, on the Miracle scale, would barely rate a 2, as against a 7 or 8 for the Virgin.

No. When I talk about Christmas, I'm really talking about "Fat-Man-In-Red-Suit Day", which I believe is also celebrated with enthusiasm in Japan and Singapore and is spreading across an increasingly consumerist China. (Like many things in Asia that they've tried to import from the West, they'll get it right soon, but the Santa at Singapore's Changi Airport a few years back handing out Chocolate Easter Eggs to random passing children demonstrated that they still have a little way to go.)

In adulthood, FMIRS Day tends to get lost, both in the baggage of our lives, and in the pressure we put ourselves under to get exactly the right presents.

I remember Christmas better as a time when kids could play at the beach without their parents watching for paedophiles with cameras, or when we could get on our bikes and ride off to wherever just because it was there. A traffic jam was something that happened around road works, and neighbourhood dogs would wander into the front yard on their own just because they could. Our garden especially. They'd wander in, wee on a patch of grass that must have had a big sign in doggie that said "marking spot here" and then wander off again.

We would spend hours walking on our own around the streets of Dover Heights where I grew up. No kids disappeared. No unspeakable crimes were committed. We were unsupervised and relatively safe. The world was a different colour. The sky was more blue and the trees and grass were green. We had a drought then, too, of course. This is Australia, there's always a drought, but there was a faith that sooner or later the rain would come and if it didn't, the government would just build another dam (I know, there's a certain logic void in that but hey, we were eight... what did we know).

The only really dark cloud on the horizon was that nuclear apocalypse clock, ticking perilously close to midnight, but even in that, there was rational reservation. "We could go and hide in the cave", we say to each other. My best friend Johhny J and I would sit on the edge of the park they'd built over the top of the water storage reserviour (known universally as "The Rezza") and stare out over the panoramic view of a very different Sydney, arguing over just how big the blast would be. It'd reach Rose Bay, I'd say. No, Double Bay. It didn't matter. After all, Christmas was summertime... 6 weeks of school holidays, a 5 speed dragster bike and a whole world to explore.

There was the mocking laugh of the Kookaburras who clearly knew a great deal more than we did about the time ahead, and the cacophany of cicadas, as far as I know a uniquely Australian phenomenon. I don't remember the last time I heard cicadas and while a part of me is thankful for the quiet, I do wonder what happened to them. And then there were the smells... the fresh cut grass, the lingering sea salt in the air, and a world without air conditioning or unleaded petrol. Even now, the slightest whiff of pina colada can transport me back to Bondi Beach, not because of the drink, but for the scent of coconut in the suntan lotion and an oblivious ignorance of the need for a real sunscreen.

Christmas time was also the season of the backyard or beach cricket match, which I was never really good at because for reasons of genetic destiny I can't catch, can't bat and can't throw. My job, therefore, was to do what all unathletic kids did, which was to sit on the sidelines and commentate, or worse, stand behind the stumps and umpire. These days, it wouldn't matter so much because athletic ability isn't a prerequisite for X-Box.

We had a pool when I was growing up too, in a time when hardly anyone had a pool, so each Christmas our place was the centre of the neighbourhood universe. (That pool, by the way, was less a reflection of our economic status and more a tribute to my dad's lateral thinking ability, but that's a story for another time.)

I really mean "centre" too. EVERYONE used to drop in to our place. On some days in summer, there were enough lilos, inner tubes and other assorted inflatables in the water that you could walk from one side of the pool to the other.

Dad's standing joke was that he should be charging admission. It was a permanent open house at Christmas time and on Christmas Day, we knew we had until about 11 to get the presents opened and either hiddden away where the other kids couldn't break them, or placed stragetically where they'd be seen. After 11, Central Station would have been a quieter place and getting a space for the towel by the pool would, today, be an elimination challenge on reality TV.

Of course, to get to Christmas Day, you had to get through Christmas Eve, and like children the world over, there was a determination to stay awake so that I might catch a glimpse of the sleigh. Then, as now, this was futile, because it's well known that parents the world over drug their children on Christmas Eve, and have done so for generations. How else can you explain the impossibility for any child young enough to believe in Santa remaining awake for the entire night before Christmas?

I never did see the Fat Man, though I am sure I heard him once, and the next day, the evidence of his passing through was right there in my room... a model fort, complete with cowboys, indians, Davey Crockett and a long list of other very un-Australian cultural icons, all set up and ready to play right there next to my bed. I've still got those little plastic figures somewhere.

And in Sydney, the day after Christmas is Boxing Day, which meant more people, another barbecue and the start of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, one of the toughest open ocean yacht races in the world. We had an uninterupted view of the Sydney Heads from our place, and we'd catch the start of the race on TV, then head outside, binoculars at the ready, to see the boats come out of the Harbour.

The barbecue was dad's pride and joy. And we're not talking about some mamby pamby stainless steel gas fired thing with a hood here. If that's what you've got, you might as well just cook in the kichen. We're talking about a REAL barbecue, with charcoal that you'd need to light an hour before you wanted to start cooking, and that you'd need to nurture until the flame and heat was just right before the meat was thrown on the grill.

Yup. That's was Christmas for me... Fat Man in Red Suit Day for a family of clearly not very religious Jews living in what, then, was a predominantly White, Anglo Saxon Christian Australia. About the only concession we ever made to our non-Christianity was that mum and dad refused to have Christmas decorations. I actually suspect they were more concerned with cleaning up post tree, but I do recall an itty bitty little one I bought one year, about ten inches high (they were still inches then), all cone shaped and covered with something that looked almost exactly not unlike snow (for those of you who recognise that phrase, my apologies to Douglas Addams). For years after that, my little tree did its job, right next to the fireplace where it was supposed to be.

Snow? Fireplace? It's a curiosity here in Australia, where Christmas falls in the middle of summer, that we still decorate cold climate pine trees with fake snow and send each other Christmas cards with pictures of white landscapes more suited to my skis than my surfboard.

We even dress some poor guy up in this wooly fur trimmed red suit, make him put on a fake bushy white beard and wear a fur lined hat, just to sit with screaming children on his lap in 35degC (90+F) heat. Not that this matters if you're 7. Or maybe it's 5 these days... I don't remember how old I was when I figured out that Santa wasn't real, but I do remember that defining moment, hand firmly held by my mother as we crossed Oxford Street at Bondi Junction, when my brain said "hey, didn't I just see Santa over at David Jones, and here he is again at Grace Brothers... now that's not right."

Aussies even persist with the traditional English Christmas dinner with a menu definitely more suited to a dark mid-winter's evening in front of an open fire with the snow gently falling outside than it is to a blue skied, balmy, summer twighlight when you're hoping the cool change arrives before the pudding...

...which is why my family ditched the heavy meal and opted for a lunch menu of barbecued cow and sausages (that may or may not have contained cow, but certainly didn't contain spicy Thai seasoning), all served by the pool with charcoal potato and salad on the side, and followed, of course by pavlova instead of pudding. My favourite was the carrot and pineapple salad, which I think mum found in a recipe book somewhere and which, back then, was about as exotic as food got if you weren't at our local Chinese restaurant.

"And no-one's allowed to go swimming for the next two hours!" It didn't matter. Bing was still singing White Christmas and there was some umpiring that needed doing in the afternoon sunshine...