By my mid-20s, I’d somehow miraculously managed to branch out into the real world. I had been to university (back when there were no fees and no real pressures). I’d got a job. (“A journalist,” I thought. “That sounds secure and well paid.”) I had even moved in with a girlfriend. All safe in the knowledge that I could rely on my parents to bail me out financially or emotionally should it ever go catastrophically awry.
So when it did all go wrong (dumped by girlfriend; sacked by job), it seemed strange to decide to move to the other side of the world, where my mum would be too far away for an “It’s all right, dear” hug. Luckily, I had my best friend, Phil, who had reached a similar, ahem, “gap” in his career and relationship résumé, so a plan was hatched to move to Australia.
We got a nice flat. We got jobs. One of us definitely snogged a girl. And, by Christmas, we had even made some friends (reconnecting with old school and university friends, who happened to be living in Sydney), who we invited over to join us for the festivities. This was the first Christmas we had spent without our parents. It was before video calls, so we’d call home using weird 25¢-a-minute phone cards from our landline. The time difference (Sydney is 12 hours ahead) meant when we called to say happy Christmas, theirs hadn’t started yet. When they called to say happy Boxing Day, we were passed out, drunk.
We missed our parents but it was difficult to feel homesick because Christmas was so different in Australia. In many ways, it didn’t feel like Christmas at all. It was boiling, for starters. Isn’t Santa a bit hot in that big red coat? How does his sleigh work if there’s no snow? We had only made one Australian friend and were mainly hanging out with English people so we did our best to recreate our Christmases from home.
We got a Christmas tree. We gave each other rubbish presents. Me to Phil – The Best of Ant & Dec’s Chums from SM:TV Live on DVD. Phil to me – a secondhand children’s drum kit (actually a great present). Christmas Day was spent on Bondi beach, where bushfires caused the sky to suddenly go dark orange as if it was the apocalypse, followed by a barbecue.
On Boxing Day we cooked for our English friends who expected a Christmas dinner like home. So we went to Woolworths (known as Woolies, the big food shop in Sydney) to get a roast turkey with all the trimmings, including sprouts. And beetroot, as for some reason Australians are obsessed with the stuff and put it on everything. Soon, all food seemed weird without it.
Cooking Christmas dinner wasn’t that hard. While it was tempting to just order a spicy prawn pizza, we had at least made some effort to keep up the British tradition of a Sunday roast, so we’d already had six months of practice. Sure, there were arguments: “No, we do the presents before breakfast,” Phil insisted. “No, we do the crackers after the main course,” I said, as per the Pelley family tradition. But hosting Christmas for the first time made us feel like adults.
Now Phil and I have our own families. Our first Christmas as hosts in Australia put us in good stead of creating new traditions for our children, while recreating the ones we had as kids. When the pandemic struck, I was invited into Phil’s bubble, since he lives just up the road, but my family lived out of town. When Boris cancelled Christmas at the last minute in 2020, I was invited to join them for the holiday, for which I am eternally grateful. We couldn’t help reminiscing about our burnt turkey, friends we never saw again and rubbish presents from our Christmas in Sydney.
It taught me that Christmas is there to be enjoyed, no matter who you spend it with, whatever the weather (freezing cold or boiling hot), and even if there is a global pandemic going on. But I’m still not pulling my cracker until after the main course.
