Australian members: How is a traditional Australian/Tasmanian Christmas celebrated? And maybe the Donaldson has Scottish Christmas traditions included as well?
Hi Roskilde.
I'm from Tasmania, but a generation older than CP Mary.
I don't know about any Scottish traditions, but I think a lot of the "older ways" of celebrating Christmas are still in place in Tassie - based on our Anglo-Irish roots.
While mainland Australians have taken to sea-food/barbecue Christmas lunches -the Sydney fish market's busiest times are Easter and Christmas - most of Tasmania, even Hobart, is still "small-town" and officially "regional Australia".
The big meal is Christmas Day lunch - and lunch is only used by the younger generation perhaps, if at all.
While mainland Australia has breakfast, lunch and dinner, Tasmanians have breakfast, dinner and tea - and there can be confusion if you use "dinner" for the wrong meal. (Same thing with what "this week" and "next week" mean - not the same concept, at least among the older ones.)
Santa Claus comes on Christmas Eve, so children wake up Christmas Day morning to all the gifts he brings. (Actually we don't call them gifts, "presents" is the word.)
A hot dinner is still common in Tasmania - some Christmas Days can be pleasant weather, but some can be dark, cold, windy or raining. Tasmania's best summer days come in February just as the children go back to school.
I'm having Christmas in Tasmania this year and my sister is doing a hot midday meal - though some families only get to the table by 2.00pm as the mornings can be busy with the Christmas ham on toast for breakfast and all the presents, people calling in as they go to dinner with other family members and they swing by if that is the only chance they have to see you that day.
(There are no traffic problems to speak of in Tasmania really - only about half a million people in a state that is one and a half times bigger than Denmark - so getting about is pretty quick. Pubic transport if minimal, so every one has a car. Some families have three or four cars parked about their house as, as soon as a teenager turns sixteen, Mum and Dad get them an "old bomb" of a car so they can get their driver's licence and get independant. I think this is different on the mainland where living expenses are higher and parking is a problem in the cities. I've met many people who haven't learnt to drive in Sydney - that is unheard of in Tasmania.)
My sister will probably do about eleven hot vegetables - !!! - , boiled and roasted, and three or four hot meats. Again the ham, though this is cold, but lamb, beef, chicken. Turkey has become big, and to roast a duck is pretty common too. (Goose used to be about, but if no-one is raising them on the farms for some income at Christmas, they can be hard to come by.)
A lot of people still make the traditional Christmas pudding - or plum duff as it is also called.
This is usually made about September and hung in it's pudding cloth from the ceiling of the kitchen until Christmas Day when it is taken down and heated for dessert. (Before our money was changed 1967, it was safe to put sixpences and threepenny bits in the pudding which was a thrill as a child to bite into.)
Some of this may sound odd to mainland Australians, but Tassie is quite different. Through winter most people make home-made soup and the supermarkets that are across Australia, in Tasmania, carry things like chicken and lamb necks for this. Pigs trotters, tripe, lamb's liver and kidneys etc are just now slowly disappearing from Coles and Woolworths in Tasmania as the generations change, and younger people aren't learning to cook.
Other desserts are trifle and merangue. Again, on the mainland merangue would be called pavlova, but it is merangue when in Tasmania.
Tea is the cold left-overs from the hot dinner, and most people move on to another person's house for this meal so they can get around all the in-laws and extended family members.
Usually the families with the youngest children host as it is easier for them to have access to the mountains of goodies Santa has brought without having to cart everything about and the tears when it can't all go with you to some other place.
Most people seem to have artificial Christmas trees now, though the Boy Scouts raise money by selling real trees in the weeks leading up.
The Queen's Christmas broadcast is now on TV in the evenings and I think only the older ones like to make sure they see it.
In Tasmania for many years a tradition has started of sitting down after tea and watching the Australian Dancesport Championships - which are held in Melbourne - which is now broadcast Christmas Day night.
The day after Christmas Day, Boxing Day, is the day when no-one cooks - everyone is facing a week of left-overs.
If Dad has time off work, it's in the car/caravan and off for a few weeks camping and fishing on the coast.
Everywhere turns into a ghost town - especially the first week, and then each week gets more people back as parents have to go to work.
The last few years the shops have had major sales starting on Boxing Day, but this is a bigger thing on the mainland than Tassie - going to the shack or the caravan is still bigger there I think.
Because Tasmania is a cheaper place to live, a lot of families have jet-skis, fishing boats, trail motor-bikes etc. for their children.
I wonder if Prince Christian will get to do some "bush-bashing" on a cousin's trail-bike now he is older.