Snippets of Christmas
I must have been around 5 years old on the first Christmas of my memory. It has become a collage of photographs, stories, and vague recollections, stitched together into a fable of a distant time. That was my first white Christmas.
As I attempt to recall some detail, any detail, I start to doubt that the memories I have are my own. Many times have I looked through old photographs with my parents and come across those of the first snow. My brother and I are stood next to each other, hands hung at our sides donned with thick gloves and Michelin man winter jackets. There is a white dusting on the ground and on our shoulders. Are the memories my own, or are they imagined from this photo? I remember playing in the snow but I am an observer to myself, watching and narrating in the third person rather than experiencing it.
* * *
For a long time in our childhood, my brother and I had two very good friends who lived round the corner from us. We would spend most of our weekends with them, playing Monopoly and The Game of Life, or building Ray Mears style dens in the university woods.
The two of them, Tom and Gigi, would often turn up at our door and we would begin a long game of Risk or Monopoly or both. It was on one of these occasions, leading up to Christmas, that we opened the door to them both chanting “Father Christmas isn’t real! Father Christmas isn’t real!”
Gigi was stuttering over the words, a huge grin stretching his mouth and letting the words out in an excited cry. He told us of how he and Tom had planned to catch Mr Christmas by staying up late into the night. He told us how they had been lying in bed, one eye on their stockings at the foot of the bed. He said their parents had snuck into their room long after they were “asleep” and left bars of chocolate and shining fountain pens in their red socks. He said their parents had denied it the next morning for several hours before finally giving in.
I later interrogated my mother, asking for the truth so my young mind could be at rest. Christmas had just got a whole lot more exciting. Now we figured the presents must be hidden somewhere in the house and it was our mission to sniff them out.
* * *
I remember the first year we had salmon for Christmas dinner. Two whole fish cooked head, tail and all in the oven with garlic and ginger. Sat around the long table in my Mum’s piano room, the velvet red curtains drawn across the icy windows, with a feast of pink fish, roasted potatoes and vegetables, peas, soft Roulé cheese, and white wine—Tropicana for the kids.
I never really enjoyed fish so I had cooked up a second dish invented by me a few days prior. “Rainbow peppers” I named it, for the red, green, orange and yellow capsicum used. It was simple, with some chicken added and a cream cheese sauce, but it became my signature dish for a few weeks and I would jump at every opportunity to make it.
That Christmas had two other families join us for the meal: old friends visiting from Australia, and the regular family of Boddingtons—who live just over the back wall of our garden.
Back then Christmas was a time of walnuts. There wasn’t a week in December for 3 years when we didn’t have a huge stash of walnuts piled high, allowing us to slowly crack through them all. We had an inventive way of getting to the rich nut: sat in the old lounge room at the front of the house, we would throw the walnuts at the wall as hard as we could, smashing them to pieces and then scavenging for the prize.
With the majority of our family living in Australia, we sometimes travelled over for Christmas to visit relatives. Uncle Leo and Auntie Kim, for example, live in the far eastern corner of Victoria, a seven hour drive from Melbourne and Sydney. They live in the small town of Mallacoota, a close-knit community with no more than one thousand residents. I loved it there, the tarmac warm under bare feet, the roads winding between streets of bungalows, the rich smell of eucalyptus oil sticking to my nostrils. Leo spends half of his life living and working on a tiny island off the coast from Mallacoota. Gabo Island is home to the world’s largest colony of Fairy Penguins and for the most part these little creatures are my uncle’s only company. He spends three months at a time on the island, living along as the lighthouse keeper.
In the Christmas of 2001, my uncles, aunties, grandparents and cousins all came to Gabo Island. We stayed at the guest house and spent every day out of the house in the Christmas sunshine, bathing in a sheltered cove of sand and lapping waves or scampering across the angry rocks surrounding the pink lighthouse.
For Christmas dinner we ate freshly caught shark and abalone, courtesy of my dad’s younger brother who worked as an abalone and shark diver at the time. The abalone is a strange meat that, if not prepared in the proper way, is very tough and chewy. I remember Opa hammering away at the discs of flesh with a knobbled hammer for almost an hour. The abalone became tender steaks, similar to pork in taste and texture.
* * *
In 2007 I returned to Australia with my mum for Christmas. The time was spent almost exclusively at Mutti’s house in Boronia, Melbourne. We would go for walks every second day, taking the train up into the hills, to the Dandenongs, where we could stroll at ease in the fresh greenery. Sunlight sparkled in the treetops and the laughs of kookaburras echoed off the eucalypt trunks.
For Christmas Dinner, Mutti had prepared a range of snacks and finger food for all the family. Chicken wings and legs marinated in a smoky brown sauce, sliced cucumber, carrot and tomatoes with a tossed salad and dips of taramasalata, hummus and soft cheese. The weather had been bright and sunny for the last few days but as the 25th drew closer, things took a turn for the worse and grey clouds rolled across the skies. Come dinner time and the rat-tat of heavy rain on the roof echoed through the bungalow. Out the window we could see huge globules of rain cascading on to the ground and streaming across the windows. Within minutes, rain had turned to hail, the pattering to a torment, the gentle breeze to a howling wind tearing past the house.
My uncle was sent outside to relight the pilot flame. I saw him struggle past the window, the rain drizzling down his face, his legs almost whipped away by the restless wind. He returned a few minutes later, shaking the rain off like a wet dog and peeling off his outer layer of waterproof plastic.
This freak weather was not to be expected in Australia, Britain perhaps, but even then only in winter. To have heavy hailing in the middle of summer—and the middle of a 10 year drought no less—came as somewhat of a surprise. It did make Christmas interesting though.
