A man walks past and my focus is broken by the sharp “thwap-thwop” of his flip-flops slapping the dull laminate tiles. In Australia, everyone calls flip-flops “thongs”, but I simply refuse to internalise that nomenclature. As long as my passport is Irish, a flip-flop will remain a flip-flop.
It looks as though the residents of Australia’s capital had some sort of meeting recently at which they agreed that sandal weather has arrived, because they’re all thwap-thwopping about me as I stand, laced as usual into my trainers, in Big W.
The place is sort of the Australian equivalent to Penneys (if it had a mutant retail baby with TK Maxx and Home Store and More). You go into Big W for basics such as storage containers, a water bottle, towels (but just everyday towels, not the fancy ones for guests you want to impress) and a 30-bag of mini Freddo bars. You’ll end up leaving with a six pack of gym socks, an air fryer, some dog treats and a fake cactus in a pot.
It’s the kind of place that features the perfunctory, dental office-hued lighting and slight air of chaos that is standard at any shop whose identity is oriented around discount goods. I needed a bucket, and am in here having an out-of-body experience when the man thwap-thwops past.
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We have a friend visiting this Christmas, so I find myself looking pensively at the artificial Christmas trees. Not the expensive, could-be-real-from-a-distance ones, but those other ones. You know – those candidates for a slightly unimpressive “second” Christmas tree that you put in a less-exalted location in the house in a stringently budgeted attempt to make it more festive. Maybe on the landing or in the downstairs toilet by the front door.
I eye an unnaturally slender little tree dusted in artificial snow. It looks purposefully designed for shoving into a tight corner. I’m hearing my mother’s voice declare that it’s vulgar – you’ll inhale that snow dust and who knows what that’d be doing to your lungs.
I can’t decide whether the little tree would make our guest’s Christmas (spent 17,00km away from their family on an airbed in our home office) marginally cheerier or distinctly more depressing. I suspect it might be the sort of Christmas tree you slowly slide down a wall beside to have a cry.
Christmas is not straightforward for anyone who happens to be older than the age of seven. There is the learned anticipation of childhood blended with that strange sense of adult disappointment that nothing magical has happened. There is the mire of family politics, the power struggle around who goes where on the day and what we owe to or should expect from others.
Logistical decisions about Christmas carry disproportionate significance. A gift isn’t just a gift. An invitation isn’t just an invitation. There is tamped down resentment, loaded glances across tables, the cacophony of unspoken words. There are people getting unreasonably anxious about poultry, and overtired children unravelling into purple-faced tantrums by two in the afternoon. There are the people who are absent, but who we wish were not, and it can all be a bit heavy.
I need to think about Christmas gifts. And if I’m sending cards home from Australia, I’d have to get on that this week to be sure they arrive in good time
If you move from the northern hemisphere to Australia, there is still all of that, but there is also the fact that you simply keep forgetting that it’s almost Christmas. It is 27 degrees outside as I stand beneath the unflatteringly ageing fluorescent lights of Big W, but the people in flip-flops are utterly unfazed. “I’m not sure it would even feel like Christmas if it wasn’t stinking hot!” one Australian guy said to me when I told him that I still find Christmas in the summer almost impossible to compute.
The Australian Christmas aesthetic is fir trees, baubles, sweaty crevices and bare limbs. It’s fairy lights competing with blanched white blades of sunlight streaming in through the window.
In Dublin or London, the trappings of Christmas are there to get you through the miserable depths of winter with your sanity intact. They cut the gloom, twinkling forth through the blurred, foggy damp like hopeful little beacons of warmth and cosiness.
You can do so many wonderful things at the height of an Australian summer, but getting suitably cosy is on the tougher side. The weather calls you outdoors, and the air conditioning cannot cool a house in which the oven has been roasting meat and potatoes since early morning in preparation for Christmas dinner.
[ ‘Our first Christmas in Australia will undoubtedly be an odd one’Opens in new window ]
The dusty looking artificial tree depresses me slightly, so I leave it behind when I emerge with my discounted bucket into the bright heat of a late November afternoon. I need to think about Christmas gifts. And if I’m sending cards home from Australia, I’d have to get on that this week to be sure they arrive in good time.
Yet everything in the world around me urges me to understand that it couldn’t possibly be Christmas. There’s festive music in the shops, but that just feels a bit like a retail worker with Spotify access is having a psychotic episode. The garlands and lit trees in the Canberra Centre – the sprawling mall in the heart of the city – are a sight paired with the wet lick of heat on your face as the automatic doors to the building open and the weather rushes in.
I have a niece and nephews at home who’ll need gifts, so I should get on that too, but I can’t convince myself it’s urgent when I look out the window and can see a woman sunbathing in a thong bikini by the complex swimming pool. A “thong” thong – not a flip-flop.
Australia may merely be an excuse – Christmas in adulthood, and when you don’t have family around, is all about making something as lovely as possible out of circumstances that don’t necessarily feel like the Christmases of your childhood. You make new traditions, you order gifts for the niece and nephews, and you Google the optimal air conditioner temperature to counteract a slowly roasting turkey. I might go back for the sad little tree. There are a few weeks left yet.
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