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Australia Diary
Christmas in ’Straya
A naughty Santa, some nice neighbors and a white lie by the pool.
Australia Diary is a weekly collection of reader stories reflecting Australia’s unique character. Share yours with us. For more information, see our previous installments.
Sydney
The Real Santa Story
By Rhys Haynes
I’m arriving home and greeting the kids, who are playing in the pool on another sweltering December afternoon in Sydney. Today there’s a look of hope in my son’s eye, but he doesn’t mention it.
A light-up Santa for the front yard has been the subject of countless discussions over recent weeks. Today, my son has been told that a trip to buy a tree and a light-up Santa is on the cards. But a swim first.
I’m standing waist deep in the pool, when the boy jumps up and whispers in my ear, “I know the real story about Santa.”
I smile and look at his 11-year-old sister, who is laughing at us. I whisper back: “Your grandma always told me: ‘As long as you believe in him, he will bring you presents.’”
We eat tacos in our cozzies, then head off.
Sydney
Bad Santa
By Jim Winton Porter
The evening starts at the party room of a pizza joint just off Oxford Street. The world is stewing outside. “Thank God for air-conditioning,” I think as I put on the Santa suit. I don’t need the beard, as mine is full and gray.
Santa gets everyone to sit on his knee, kisses them and makes inappropriate small talk. He brags about going clubbing and forgets presents. He has a glass of tequila in one hand.
One of the staff members has a young son along. He’s 6 or 7. Looks me up and down. Decides it’s O.K. and sits on my knee. I ask what he wants for Christmas. He tells me his list.
With me still in my Santa suit, the party heads to a pub across the road. We’re drinking seriously now. Shots of tequila, cocktails with sexual names.
The air is charged with summer heat.
A friend is tapping her fingers on the sweaty glass of a Long Island iced tea. She looks at me, her nose is red, and I resist making a joke about Rudolph. She leans in close, breath hot with the scent of peppermint.
“Merry Christmas, Santa,” she shouts.
Hepburn
Decking a Whole Town’s Halls
By Kevin Childs
In a little central Victorian town near where I live, folks found that apathy had become the Grinch who stole Christmas.
Apart from a few “Season’s Greetings” signs, the local council had done nothing to dress up the town. No one asked the council for money, so little happened until a few energetic residents raised over $3,000 in less than 24 hours.
Instead of just buying decorations, volunteers swarmed into a major DIY.
Out went an appeal for gum tree branches.
As luck would have it, a big storm hit. Down came trees and branches across town. The town’s emergency crews collected the branches at a little park. In came the elves to gild the leaves and drill holes in the branches for hanging.
Before you could say “Merry Christmas,” the main street was a green and gold bonanza of an Aussie Christmas.
“By gum,” said a wizened local, “they’ve done it.”
Spying all this on social media, residents of a nearby village thought, “Why not us, too?” And away they went, turning some of their hamlet into a festive Yuletide forest.
Australia Diary is a weekly collection of reader stories reflecting Australia’s unique character. Share yours with us. For more information, see our past installments.
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