CHAPTER XXIIICHRISTMAS IN AUSTRALIA
Whileit may be far from exact to say, with certain modern philosophers, that climate creates and explains religions, it is undoubtedly true that climate exercises a modifying effect upon certain of the traditional observances of religion. Christmas is a case in point. A man brought up in a northern clime associates the great festival with the shortest day, and often with the sharpest weather. Keen frost, deep snow, biting winds, roaring fires, bare gardens—these are the framework of his Christmas. His thought transfers these wintry conditions to the Holy Land, and he pictures the great Birth as having occurred amidst the rigours of a northern winter. In this he is probably wrong, but it is an error taught him by his native soil, and from which often he has not sufficient knowledge or imagination to free himself. Christmas and cold are to him synonymous.
When such a man crosses the seas and lives for a time in a tropical or a sub-tropical climate, he finds it exceedingly difficult to adjust himself to the new Christmas conditions. He finds his new Christmas so utterly different from anything hehas hitherto experienced, that the observance of the festival smacks of unreality. It is now midsummer with him; the days of the year are at their longest; the fireplaces are filled with shavings, or discreetly hidden from view by painted screens. The winds that blow come with fiery breath, the gardens are blooming with summer flowers, and the orchards are filled with fruit trees bearing their ripened produce. It requires a particularly powerful imagination to surmount this actual Christmas and to replace it by the traditional Christmas of the Old Land. And this kind of imagination I do not possess.
It was an announcement in a large shop in Collins Street that first made me aware of the proximity of Christmas: “Christmas Presents for the Folks at Home—the last English mail in time for Christmas leaves Melbourne on Nov. 19.” Thus ran the notice. And it struck me in a most curious manner. The calendar distinctly pointed to Christmas, but the weather and the gardens and the general surroundings whispered mockingly: “This is nearing midsummer; the longest day is coming. Christmas is a fiction—poor Englishman, there is no Christmas for you; get out your duck suits and straw hat, and prepare for picnics and a summer holiday.” And then I knew that I must walk by faith and not by sight. For the first time in my life Christmas became empty of meaning. All the sentiment of it vanished in a moment. I was alone, an actor in the midst of a stage devoid of scenery. Every single “property” of the great Christmas festival slowly accumulatedduring more than forty years of life had been carried away in an instant. Blazing logs, crackling fires, merry parties, mysterious stockings, frosty window panes, keen air, snow-covered ground, and, above all, the waits—all had gone, carried off by the magician who lives on this side of the Equator.
And immediately Collins Street, for the moment, became a place of exile. Its light turned to darkness, its charm fled. I turned to the dear little woman at my side, and I saw that her face was wet with tears.
We had to encounter a new kind of Christmas, and when the first shock was over we settled to the idea, and determined to have a good time. “But why not have the old and the new?” we said. If space had placed 13,000 miles between us and the Christmas we love so well, space could not imprison our thoughts. So we determined to fly to the Old Country and have an old-fashioned English Christmas. In a moment of time we were in Gamage’s, showing the children the wonderful toys. Then we shopped in Regent Street, and afterwards went to Maskelyne and Devant’s, and later took the train into the country. We watched the snow fall, and afterwards did some snowballing. We went to church, and sang hymns and carols. And then came dinner and the family party. We had a real good time, until the maid came and said: “There’s a north wind, madam. I am going to close the windows.” And in a moment we were back to our own Christmas, with the thermometer registering a little over ninety degrees.
That north wind needs a word of explanation. It is the sirocco of Victoria. Its hot breath is heralded by a day or a night of depression. And when it arrives it is pitiless. Great clouds of dust come with it, making life unbearable. Like a funeral pall the dust hangs over everything. The skin becomes hot and dry, and everybody is out of temper. It is useless to fight the north wind. The only thing to be done is to run away from it by closing up the house and hermetically sealing every window until the calamity is overpast. When the change comes and the wind veers to the south, the relief is unspeakably precious. The temperature will drop sometimes no fewer than thirty-five degrees in half an hour. And then it is that influenza is likely to be contracted. I said the thermometer registered ninety degrees; that was when the north wind commenced to blow. But at midday the mercury had mounted up to one hundred degrees inthe shade. It was terrible. The wind was as the breath of a fiery oven. The trees drooped, the flowers hung lifeless upon their stalks, the grass of the lawn turned brown in an hour, and the parched earth gaped and gasped. Over the entire soil there quivered the fateful shimmer of the heat. Men and birds and beasts were smitten with an overwhelming languor. It was the African desert over again without relief. Little wonder, then, on the next day, the journals reported fires in every direction. One single spark sufficed to set an entire countryside on fire. Enormous crops of wheat, ripe and ready to be reaped,were consumed by the flames in a single morning. Useless to fight that raging furnace! Once the first fiery tongue leapt from one stalk to another the whole area was doomed. In one part of Victoria the bush and wheat-field fires devastated fifty miles of country.
Thus our Christmas week opened. After that all Christmas ceremony was obviously mere stage acting. Yet the form was rigorously observed. Cards were exchanged and presents given. Butsuchpresents! Take the following alluring notices, for example, and let anyone imagine how they struck an Englishman for the first time:
“New sunshades and parasols—splendid presents for Christmas.” “New summer hats—just the thing for a Christmas present.” “Indian muslins, just arrived—nothing better for a Christmas present.” It was all lost upon me. For parasols I insisted upon reading “umbrellas”; for summer hats, “furs and snow-boots”; for Indian muslins, “warm West of England tweeds”—habits like mine cannot be broken in a moment. Of course, there are toy fairs arranged for the youngsters, and there is even a pretence of having Father Christmas in traditional garb. But what can the white-bearded, frosted patriarch mean to children who have never seen snow and whose patriarchs are sunburnt with long exposure to the atmosphere in the hot Bush?
Most of all I miss the poultry display. Those long lines of turkeys and geese killed a week in advance of Christmas, and exhibited in enticingfashion until Christmas Eve!—we have none of that here. Imagine a turkey being hung day after day for a week in an atmosphere like this! There is one display, and that is on Christmas Eve, and even that one is modest compared with what we have been accustomed to in the Old Country. The birds are not killed until the last minute, hence they are not so tender as English turkeys. It is mere slavery, this traditional eating of turkey and plum-pudding at Christmas time; but the older folk here permit themselves to be willing victims of custom. It is turkey and plum-pudding at home; then it shall be that here, so they argue. Climate and season protest against it, but in vain. One family of which I heard drew down their blinds one Christmas, and lit the gas, and ate their Christmas dinner under artificial light. It was the nearest approach they could make to the Old Country way.
The younger generation is making the daring experiment of trying to abandon the English Christmas, and to replace it by an Australian festival. They argue that the transplanting of Northern customs to these hot climes is ridiculous, and that whereas rich and heavy meals may be in place at Christmastide in a climate where snow and frost are found, they are utterly out of place here under azure-burning skies. Some plants will not bear transplanting, and this is one of them. The Yule-log and furs have never established themselves here at midsummer, neither should the turkey and plum-pudding be permitted to do so. Hence the young Australian is quietly droppingthe traditional Christmas fare, and substituting for it ices, cool drinks, and fruit. And as peaches and apricots are now selling at one penny per pound, he finds it advantageous, in more ways than one, to accept the natural boon of the country rather than the artificial one of tradition.
A new Christmas is being born in which the old spirit is finding fresh forms more consonant with the climate. God forbid that the old spirit should ever die!
The great heat which ushered in our last Christmas week in Australia was exceptionally trying during the hours of public worship. For many, church-going was out of the question. People remained at home, seeking coolness in darkened houses. Those who ventured out to church on the Sunday morning had to travel in stifling railway carriages, or walk over baking pavements. Within the church electric fans were moving, together with a multitude of hand fans. At first it is distracting to a preacher to speak to hundreds of people who are fanning themselves; after a time, however, neither preacher nor audience takes any notice of the motion. The feminine portion of the congregation is clad wholly in white; the men affect light cashmeres, tweeds, or tussore silk. Scarcely a black hat is seen. “Topees,” tropical helmets, and straws are the order of the day. At night the church was full for a special Christmas service. But everybody was languid. The hymns were sung without the usual enthusiasm. The great heat had, for the time being, ruined the organ, whichremained silent. The poor preacher used up a handkerchief or two in the effort to keep his face dry. Then it was that the incongruity of keeping the traditional Christmas under the Southern Cross was manifest in its fullest form. For the choir stood and sang the carol, beginning:
“See amid the winter snow,”
“See amid the winter snow,”
“See amid the winter snow,”
and the thermometer registered over ninety degrees!
They sang again Rossetti’s beautiful song,
“In the bleak mid-winter,”
“In the bleak mid-winter,”
“In the bleak mid-winter,”
and the great organ solemnly protested that it had been ruined temporarily by midsummer heat.
No! it is useless to try and link up a Northern Christmas with our Australian climate. The effort miserably fails.
Christmas Day, however, compensated us for all the trying heat of the previous week. There came one of those dramatic changes in temperature for which Melbourne is noted. In one hour the glass fell nearly thirty degrees. A “southerly buster” broke over us without warning, and when the dust storm had passed people were glad to put on thicker clothing. And so it came to pass that Christmas Day was chilly. The tempest broke up the heat and gave us weather less than normal. With the cooler temperature, goose and plum-pudding seemed more in place than in former years. But how could there be an English Christmas Day when the light remained until half-past eight? Before the kindly darkness cameon, the little people, who “at home” would have been busy with the Christmas-tree, were yawning and inquiring after bed.
One can never forget these Christmas days under the Southern Cross, but to experience the ancient sentiment of Christmas one must be in the ancient home.