Living in Australia, it’s difficult to ignore the sights and sounds announcing the coming of Christmas: starting from a month out, your emails begin to fill up with increasingly urgent and vaguely threatening gift suggestions; carols and Mariah Carey become the soundtrack to your weekly shop.
For the more than 50% of Australians who do not identify as Christian, the holiday is still a key date in the calendar. Many families have the day off and many workplaces enforce “shut-down periods” over the time between 25 December and early January, making it a natural time to relax, spend time with loved ones – and even create traditions. Here, five people share their celebrations.
A labour of love lasagne
Vijeta Venkataraman
My family is Hindu but my parents have always been really curious about the universal message in all religions. And my family’s Christmas tradition in Australia, where we all now live, revolves around a very special lasagne.
In the 70s my grandfather worked for Air India and my grandmother was a housekeeper. During a stint in Brooklyn, New York, my tiny, sari-clad Indian grandmother was taught a vegetarian lasagne recipe from an Italian American family – revolutionary for my grandmother at the time. She had grown up, like everyone else around her, only eating Indian food.
Ten years later, my dad, who grew up in Tirunelveli, in the south of India, went to meet my mother for the first time at my grandparents’ house. The etiquette for this kind of meeting – one with a view to arranging a marriage – is to welcome your guest with something typically south Indian to “show your culture”. Instead, my grandmother, who never cared much for those kinds of customs, decided to make my father a giant, steaming tray of authentic NYC lasagne. My father had never seen anything like it. His horizons were opened. Love blossomed. It became a part of the family lore.
I can’t overestimate what a labour of love this lasagne is every Christmas. It involves so much preparation and planning: the eggplant is salted days in advance, two sauces are alchemised, two very specific lasagne pans are produced from an ancient crockery cupboard. Whether it’s between two immigrants in New York City in the 70s, or between a mother and child in Sydney, love is being shared so that we can be fed by it and pass it along. I’m lucky enough to have that love in abundance; and to my delight, baked into 6kg of cheesy bliss.
Themed food at a family feast
Bella Al-karkhey
My Arab mum is obsessed with Christmas. My parents both grew up in super-religious Muslim households but they themselves didn’t connect to it, and they’ve raised my siblings and I in a non-practising environment. Religion always felt like an afterthought in our home. We do celebrate Ramadan and Eid but, for us, that’s more about community and culture.
So when it comes to Christmas we go all out as well. Like Eid and Ramadan, it’s a great opportunity for us to bring everyone together and share food and laughter.
My mum will take any opportunity to decorate the house with fairy lights and garlands. She also loves Christmas-themed food, and I don’t mean a roast or anything traditional. I mean eccentric little dishes from TikTok, like pull-apart garlic bread in the shape of a Christmas tree, or chocolate-covered pine cones, or “holiday punch”. And my dad loves to give people presents. He’s a writer as well so he loves any excuse to gift people books (even those who don’t read).
For the big day itself, we always make a feast. It always involves a roast, whether that’s chicken or beef or lamb. I love to make side dishes that have a Middle Eastern bent to them – think garlic-roasted carrots drizzled with a lemon tahini yoghurt sauce, or pomegranate cocktails. And lastly, the most constant of all, an over-the-top charcuterie table (yes, table) filled with everything you can think of.
Danish cinema and fancy champagne, solo
Jess Ho
I grew up in a very religious Christian Baptist household. When I was younger and more open to ideas, I considered myself agnostic but I think ageing has influenced that. Now I’m an atheist.
Even though I grew up in a religious household, we never really did Christmas. As I grew older, when I was invited to a friend’s Christmas, I felt as though I was in the way. So since then I’ve spent the day on my own, drinking grower champagne in my underpants and watching Lars von Trier films. It sounds depressing but I guarantee you it isn’t. I like it because there are no expectations. I have a lot of friends who aren’t religious but spend Christmas with their families and they’re so stressed beforehand. They feel obliged to spend Christmas with their families because it’s tradition, but it always ends in arguments. It’s nice to know I can avoid that.
Now that I’m a bit older I have more money, so I try to be in Asia over the holiday period, where Christmas always takes a back seat to the lunar new year. It’s business as usual and everything is open. It doesn’t mean I don’t have a drink in my room and watch confronting Danish cinema on my laptop, though. It’s been over a decade of this and I am such a sicko – I look forward to it every year.
Beach in the sunshine, board games in the rain
Raveena Grover
Culturally I’m Hindu. I grew up Hindu, practising customs that were important to my family, like Rakhi and Diwali, and abstaining from eating meat during certain times of the year.
Christmas is a funny time of year for me. My family is often working, as is my close friend Shivani’s family. So, for the last five or six years Shivani and I have either done a beach or board game day on Christmas. (It’s weather-dependent.) Since neither of our families celebrate Christmas in the classic sense and we always have the day off, we’ve made it a tradition to spend it together doing something we enjoy. Shivani is also culturally Hindu, so it’s a great way to feel connected to our community during a day that is reserved for doing so. It’s strengthened our bond. And it’s become our own secular, somewhat Hindu-coded Christmas tradition.
Waking up early to keep the country company
Alice Zaslavsky
For my Georgian-Jewish family, Christmas Day was just another day in December. Dad would mow the lawn.
Now I have in-laws who have always celebrated Christmas, so that has given us another opportunity to feast and come together. I’ve catered Christmas lunch for our extended families a few times and it’s fun. We really leaned in and went ham on it. This year we decorated a tree for the first time with our four-year-old daughter – I repurposed some dehydrated oranges for it – so it’s becoming a proper Chrismukkah now. And we’ll keep it up for novi god (new year), so December is full of festivities.
But on Christmas morning, from 6.30am to 10am, I’ll be hosting the national breakfast show on ABC local radio. It’s a relatively new tradition for me, my second year, but there are many listeners who have been tuning in much longer.
I know some people will be waking up without a gathering or company to look forward to. The radio is a place they can come for companionship.
We’ll get people calling in from isolated areas to wish everyone a merry Christmas, who tell us it’s their one opportunity to do so that day.
Because I’m a cook, last year I got a lot of questions about catering like, “Help! I’ve split the custard.” I got to be Agony Alice for three and a half hours.
I’m mindful Australia is a multicultural country, so I want to balance my “merry Christmases” with my “happy festive seasons” and my “hello, it’s Monday”.
Some friends have suggested that hosting a live, call-in radio show sounds like an annoying thing to do at 6.30am on Christmas morning. But it’s actually an honour.
