Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere can be a bit of a Humbug for those from the Northern Hemisphere.
It’s a warm, sunny day as spring matures into summer. Everything is lush and green. The flowers are blooming, and the booming surf beckons. It is a perfect day until I am jarred out of my revelry by something horribly out of place, Bing Crosby singing “Let it Snow,” piped in by an overhead sound system.
The song just seems all wrong. Not just because snow is the last thing we can expect from the weather but because it doesn’t feel like Christmas.
For me, Christmas is a time of long dark evenings spent around the fire with my family. We are big on hygge, the Danish quality of coziness. We love hunkering down at home with a rosy fire, warm blanket, candles, the smell of baked goods, and family and close friends to share it all with. So the long days totally break with my idea of what this season is all about. Rather than staying in to sing Christmas carols and watch Rudolph for the millionth time, I feel the desire to go walk along the beach and watch the sun dip into the ocean at 9:00 pm.
This reversal of the seasons is really spoiling my Christmas vibe. I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that the holiday is only a few weeks away. I know it intellectually in my head, but I don’t feel it intuitively in my gut. It’s so bad that we have passed Thanksgiving and still haven’t put up a single decoration. Nor have I started my holiday shopping, although that is not a change from most years.
We need to settle into some new holiday traditions that match the season we find ourselves in, but that isn’t as easy as it sounds. Most of the Christmas iconography we see is the same as in the northern hemisphere; Santa Clause in a warm, fur-trimmed red coat posing with reindeer and a sleigh in the snow. Shouldn’t southern hemisphere countries have their own spin on Santa in sunglasses and beach shorts, posing with a surfboard or something? But no, New Zealand has totally bought into the idea of a northern hemisphere Christmas complete with fake snow on your Christmas tree.
And how about some seasonal music that actually matches the season. Singing along to “It’s cold outside” just doesn’t work with open windows and a warm sea breeze blowing through the house. We need some Christmas music about grilling on the beach rather than roasting chestnuts on an open fire.
This hurts most in the anticipation of Christmas. That growing feeling of wonder and excitement was the best part of the holiday when I was younger. Now I am missing out on that feeling of knowing Christmas is coming and wishing it would come sooner. The longing is a big part of the fun for anyone who is a child or who has one. But down here, I seem to be in the opposite frame of mind; I want the holiday to arrive slower because I don’t feel any anticipation.
There are good points to having the holiday in the summer. For one, you don’t have to worry that winter weather will keep you from your holiday travels. For another, it is summer recess from school, so the kids have time off, and not just the kids. Most businesses shut down for a Christmas to New Years’ break, so adults get time off too. The hospital can’t close its doors, but the operating theater shuts down for elective surgeries. By arranging the call schedule to take calls in longer blocks, I can have about a week of “vacation” without using any of my vacation days. That is a new tradition I can get behind.
This free time seemed the perfect gift until I asked my daughter what she wanted to do over Christmas break, and she answered, “Go skiing.” We can do many things here over the break: bungy jump, hike a glacier, climb a mountain, explore a cave, soak in a natural hot pool, play by the ocean, etc. Still, we can’t do the one thing we have done for most holidays she remembers: go skiing.
So we need to create new traditions for the holiday we can enjoy in the sunny southern hemisphere. Perhaps we will hang out on the beach, lay on the sand, and play in the surf. Or go to a large inland lake to spend the day paddle boarding. I have suggested taking up surfing as a fill-in for skiing, but no takers so far.
We will do some traditional things, like putting up a tree, but not with fake snow. Heidi wants to make cookies and other baked goods, but one of the nice parts of holiday baking is how it warms the house on a cold day. Here, we don’t need to warm the home this time of year, and baking means opening windows to help dissipate the heat.
Over the winter, we celebrated a relatively new tradition in this area, Christmas in July. I think it started as a way to drum up some activity in the slow winter season, made even slower by COVID. Local communities scheduled weekend events to attract people to their downtown area. They put up lights, sponsored music, set up craft stalls, and sold hot, fresh “American Style Donuts” out of a converted camper. But honestly, it was a little embarrassing. The effort was underwhelming, and the turnout was even more lackluster. We could walk through it all in about ten minutes, and given it was cold and damp, that was about as long as we wanted to spend. The events just can’t overcome a straightforward problem; it’s not Christmas.
So we can have actual Christmas in the sun or pseudo-Christmas in the winter, but both times lack something in my northern hemisphere brain. But I’m afraid it won’t feel the same because those Christmas lights show up best in the dark, but it doesn’t get dark until 9:30 or later. Nonetheless, we will get out the tree and decorate it for the holiday. Heidi will prepare her baked goods, just probably not in the same prodigious numbers. We’ll have presents under the tree and everything but snow.
I know it must be hard to listen to me complain about my southern hemisphere problems while my friends in the mid-west hunker down (there really is no better world to describe it) to endure another cold, dark winter, and my friends in Colorado pray for fresh powder to ski on. I’ll be thinking of you all as I sip a cocktail on my deck and watch the sun sink into the ocean on a warm summer’s evening that feels great, just not Christmas great.
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