Christmas Day in 2007!
Christmas in New Zealand is combined with the summer holidays so as well as all the usual Christmas activities – buying presents etc, we are usually preparing for our summer holidays. School closes for the end of year and there is a six week holiday over the summer until the new school year starts in February. Most families take their annual holiday over this period.
In the lead up to Christmas there are many annual activities in the towns – some have a Christmas parade, many have a ‘Christmas in the Park’ which features carol singing, and items by local and guest artists.
Contrary to popular belief we don’t all celebrate Christmas day with a barbeque at the beach! In fact our hottest summer weather is often from the middle of January until late February or March.However a barbeque is a popular pastime over all the summer, in our family we have often had a barbeque at home on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) for the wider family. And at the beach much of the cooking is done on the ‘barbie’!
Christmas day for our family – often I go to midnight service on Christmas Eve. Then its an early start on Christmas morning to prepare the turkey and get it into the oven. We have a late midday dinner, around 1.30pm. When the children were younger they would have a stocking by their beds to open immediately, then after breakfast we would open the presents under the tree.
Dinner for us is - a seafood entrée, then turkey (although this year I am cooking a glazed ham), roast veges, new potatoes (from my garden), fresh beans (from the garden also) and maybe a salad. Dessert is always a traditional pavlova and fruit salad (more on pavlova later).
In the afternoon sometimes we go for a walk, have a sleep, occasionally visit an elderly friend etc. When the children were younger it was quite different – they would be playing with their presents and we would play with them, maybe we would have a game of cricket on the front lawn etc. The evening meal is always the leftovers! The last few pieces of pavlova are carefully divided up!
4 comments:
It sounds just like what we do here in the UK - only in the sunshine! It would seem strange to me having a warm sunny day. We will have the curtains closed, fire and lights on by 5pm!
Do you have Christmas pudding etc? You mention pavlova but no mince pies or Christmas cake.
Gail
Our customs are really very English! Most people have Christmas cake and Christmas mince pies also.
Our family are not great fans of Christmas cake but they all like Christmas mince pies.
How lovely-- and the weather must make it perfect.
I can imagine, however, that the hot weather must make you feel less like eating a heavy, hot meal! I love ham-- much prefer it to turkey, myself. And I envy all the garden-fresh vegetables! There is no comparison, flavour-wise...
xo CGF
Like I was as a youngster, our children are rather ho hum about the snow aspect of Christmas traditions.
Even the Christmas tree has no lasting traditions attached to it ie no old decorations etc.
They used to enjoy going out to the orchard and cutting the little pines growing by the railways lines, they would sell the surplus ones for pocket money.
However other families could well be quite different to us!
I think that the weather makes a big difference in the Southern hemisphere, we are not sitting around a log fire inside, instead we are doing summery things!
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