How Do Christmas & New Year Work for You?

Ideals are not Real

Let me start by wishing everyone the happiest festive season for 2023. I hope you have friends and family to get together with and enjoy. However, I know you’ll agree that this time of year is not called the Silly Season for nothing. I’ve therefore decided to talk about my odd Christmas history. It is probably good that my previously prepared post on this topic was lost with Wattletales’ first big crash this past week because it may have been a tad miserable. So, I’ll press ahead with this somewhat less salubrious and less well-thought-out tale.

As you can see, I’m a koala, gum tree and wattle girl this Christmas. While I don’t mind a roast (with salad) on Christmas Day, it really doesn’t suit our usual hot weather at this time of year. The traditional ideal of red and white, reindeer-in-snow images of other worlds have never appealed to me. We got our own flag down under, we chose the bilby for Easter and will one day become a republic. It might be too much to want to see our Christmas iconography change my lifetime, but I can wish.

On Being Alone

As we know, many people are alone at Christmas time for various reasons. I have personally spent quite a few years far from family and friends. I’ve had a few pity invites over the years. I only accepted once but found it increased my sense of having nobody. That was years ago.

Once, I took myself to a hotel for a slap-up Christmas lunch (Christmas Dinner as it used to be known), but the long stares penetrated with a degree of patronising sympathy I found uncomfortable. And I paid for it! Since then, I have celebrated my solitariness whenever the need arose without succumbing to self-pity that my life was seen by others to be falling short of mandatory merriment and gifts.

A Publican’s Christmas

Those who know me have heard me say I was born and bred in pubs many times. I also worked in hotels of various degrees of status, from receptionist to cabaret-night and dining room hostess to waitress, housemaid, cook and bottlewasher, both full-time and part-time until my mid-forties.

My last two jobs were as a kitchen hand and waitress at the Ensenada Motor Inn on Colley Terrace in Glenelg and the Atlantic Tower Motor Inn, where I cooked breakfast and cleaned rooms on weekends, then vacuumed the entire space of the tower’s revolving restaurant. Those jobs gave me extra money for my postgraduate fieldwork in Sri Lanka, where I took my three lovely kids.

The thing about being a publican’s daughter in my day was the tradition — I don’t know if things have changed — for the publican’s family to serve staff a feast after the crowds went home. As a family, we had small private moments to exchange gifts first thing in the morning. New Year’s Eve was as busy, and the world stayed busy until February when life returned to normal. I still feel as though the year doesn’t get properly under way till then, although earlier Easter marketing sometimes spoils that.

Where to Go?

A lot of folderol accompanies decisions about where to go and who will entertain at Christmas time. Families may fight about these things, for often, there are conflicting demands and jealousy between siblings and generations.

We were lucky. My in-laws were Dutch, and they celebrated St Nicholas on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day, so we could celebrate with both families without concern. After the divorce, and as the children got older, my parents, my kids and I would more often go to a great Chinese restaurant that used to be nearby on Brighton Road for Christmas Day, particularly when my brother visited us from Canberra.

Over the Years

It’s impossible to categorise a lifetime of Christmases. My three children scattered to the winds, my eldest living in London and the USA for many years, the others interstate. Before they left home and both of my parents were still alive, the kids and I visited my father, then living in the War Veteran’s Home in Fullarton. Later, as Dad’s life was ebbing, I visited him alone.

At one stage in my middle years, the idea of orphan Christmas celebrations emerged. If you are travelling, away from home or even simply alone, they can be a lot of fun. One of my favourites was eating Chinese food for Christmas in Delhi, India, with like-minded travellers from other parts of the world.

Somewhere between young children and dying parents, Cyclone Tracy intervened. That was a non-Christmas I’ll never forget.

As for New Year’s Eve

I always look forward to a new year, just as I look forward to each new day, but I’ve never liked New Year’s Eve celebrations. In pubs, the drunks got a bit much, and there was so much to clean up afterwards. In my younger years, everyone seemed to go on a party crawl, looking for the best place to be, leaving many hosts bereft and insulted, and my guess is the crawlers would never have found a decent party with that attitude. Even then, I thought that way.

As I got older, and mostly alone by preference at this stage, I preferred a good night’s sleep and still do. Living in Manson Towers in Glenelg, I now go to bed early, and should the crack of midnight fireworks on the foreshore wake me, I listen, smile, and go back to sleep. Sometimes, I get up and watch the highest sparkles, which I can see from my balcony.

Apart from that, I tend to spend the festive season, and the build-up to New Year’s Eve, musing.

My 2023 Guests

Wattletales has been privileged again in 2023 to have had a number of guests share their creative journey tales with us all. I thank them all.

Chance Encounters by Mandy Toczek McPeake

Beth Baillie’s Story by Beth Baillie

The Creative Existence by Deb Stewart

Bewitched by Words by Virgilio Goncalves

Creativity and the Bush by Ruth Morgan

While their contributions appeared in my regular post, I also thank the members of the Everyone’s a Poet Workshop at Glenelg Community Centre for sharing their work with Wattletales as well.

A Final Word

For those of us lucky enough not to be in crisis this year, I’m going to repeat my old Dad’s admonishment whenever I grizzled, ‘If you think you’re having a rough time, just read the papers, Luv’. I am personally thankful for being where I am and for the gift of a long life without ever having to suffer the torments that people elsewhere now experience in many parts of the world. May they find peace soon.

Bugger the website crash. We’re back!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Wattletales