In keeping with the festive spirit of the season, I am republishing an article I wrote for Going In-Depth in December 2016. I have slightly reworded it as my family situation has changed since then. Mum passed in 2020 and my little grandson was born in 2022 and lives in Sweden. Once a year I visit and we catch up on all our family birthdays!

But first I want to say that I have included all the articles I wrote for Going In-Depth between 2015 and 2017 on a new page Genealogy Downunder: Australia and New Zealand on my Diary of an Australian Genealogist blog. This is another way of sharing those articles plus all my family history snippets mentioned in the articles with a wider audience.

This blog post looks at what Christmas was like for our ancestors. While we may not have personal accounts of what they did at Christmas time, what we do know is that it was very different from what they were used to back home.

Digitised newspapers are one way to discover what was happening each Christmas and often the editorials sum up comparisons between the Old World and the New. A keyword search in Trove < http://trove.nla.gov.au/> on Christmas returns thousands of hits which can be narrowed down by state, decade and even year.

An editorial in The Telegraph (Brisbane, Queensland), on Monday 25 December 1882 provides an insight into the differences.

…....The only thing to complain about the preparations for the festivities was the oppressive heat which prevailed during the whole of last week. To the thousands of people who during the present year have arrived in the colony from Great Britain the heat must have seemed sorely out of place at Christmas-tide; or Christmas sorely out of place in the middle of a semi-tropical summer. It does detract somewhat from the enjoyment of even old colonists. There is much in the power of association. To new chums Christmas without the matin welcome of Christmas singers, without holly berries and mistletoe, without ice and snow and without a long hilarious evening in a room all aglow with the ruddy radiance of a huge yule log, is almost as anomalous and unnatural as Christmas minus roast beef or goose, turkey, and plum-pudding. Christmas with the thermometer in the nineties, and for Christmas singers mosquitoes making music as melodious as a jew’s harp, is an unwelcome substitute for the sharp bracing winter holiday of the old land. ……. To the labouring classes comfort and a high thermometer are better than poverty and an empty pantry. There is little here now to diminish the merriness of this festive season. We cordially wish that all our readers may have the good things which make good cheer, and hearts to enjoy them.

Most of our ancestors were probably better off in the new country, with many able to farm the land, establish businesses, gain employment, and feed and educate their families. Perhaps the only time they remembered the old country was at times like Christmas when they might have been missing loved ones or thinking of earlier family gatherings.

Some of my earliest Christmas memories as a child are of Mum spraying this ‘white stuff’ on the windows and doors to make it look like it had snowed. Mum is 4th generation Australian and at that time she had never travelled anywhere to see snow. Yet there were holly berry decorations on the pine tree, a hot Christmas roast and vegies followed by plum pudding and custard, all in the heat of the day. On the few occasions we have tried for a seafood and salad  lunch and ice cream with pudding Mum has invariably said ‘but that’s not Christmas’. Traditions can be passed down even when a person has not experienced them at first hand.

Mum grew up in the 1930s and even back then there were those trying to argue for a change of our Christmas habits. The Telegraph on Friday 23 December 1938 under the banner of Climate and Rational Living asked the following question.

…...Might not the cold collation become the Christmas fashion in Queensland? With infinitely less trouble to prepare, this can be made no less festive than the steaming turkey and pudding of England. Cold bird, cold ham cooling salads, frozen jellies, trifles and our luscious fruits – what more could one ask?……

It is pathetic to see in Queensland, as one commonly does, after Christmas dinner in the grilling heat, a family sitting about in a kind of perspiring coma, boa-constricting after the traditional feast – doped, heavy-eyed, immovable in face of the unnerving task of digestion…….

This year (2016) I again suggested the cold seafood lunch and we would even bring all the prawns, crabs and salads. But no, there must be a roast pork, two roast chickens, a ham, roast potatoes, cauliflower au gratin, peas and gravy followed by plum pudding and custard. If we are lucky there will be five of us, possibly seven at the lunch table. Why so much food for so few? As Mum would say ‘but it’s Christmas’. I suspect we will be sitting there afterwards like The Telegraph’s boa-constrictor!

Let’s fast forward back to the 1950s and in The Beaudesert Times on Friday 25 November 1955 we are reminded “It’s Time To Make The Christmas Cake”.

Christmas is the time of good will and good food. We don’t have the Old World White Christmas in Queensland but we do have all the old-fashioned Christmas dishes to which we add our own seasonal offerings and we know that no Yuletide season is complete without a Christmas Fruitcake. This cake must be something special.

Mercifully we have let this Christmas tradition lapse in recent years but on occasion, fruit mince pies have been known to appear on the table instead. Why not a lamington or a pavlova? Coconut and meringue are almost snowlike but no, not Christmassy enough for Mum. As a child I remember Mum making egg nog and to be honest, I don’t think I have had it since I was a small child. It has probably been overtaken by beer as the drink of choice by many Queenslanders.

In the Australian Women’s Weekly, 27 November 1957, there were eight must have recipes for a wonderful Christmas. Any guesses what they were? In no particular order:

·         Canadian Fruit Cake

·         Roast Turkey

·         Scotch Shortbread

·         Fondant Creams

·         Cold Collation

·         Same Day Christmas Pudding

·         Fruit Christmas Mince

·         Christmas Wreath

The only one I got mildly excited about was the Cold Collation until I read the ingredients. Sheep tongues, ham and chicken with detailed instructions on how to cook and skin the tongues. This brought back vivid memories of growing up on brains, tripe (stomach), lamb’s fry (liver) and kidneys.  All foods guaranteed to kill my appetite unless the liver is in a rather tasty pate!  

As our family is so small, and shrinking, we haven’t got any new traditions to pass down as we still turn up at Mum’s every year when we can. While we have agreed on her place again in 2016, I’m still pushing for the seafood, salads and less fuss. Last year we were the ones who did the cooking in her small kitchen and it was definitely cooler outside despite the blazing heat of a Queensland summer. Never again, so it won’t be me in the kitchen this year. My brother is not cooking inclined and likes to bring the chooks and ham. He’s also a fan of less fuss. Is this the year to start a new family tradition?

Christmas 2024 will just be Max and myself at Bribie Island. Mum has passed. My son and his family live in Sweden. My brother is recovering from a hip operation and can’t travel. His kids will visit him and his wife in Brisbane. And yes, it will be a seafood lunch!

What are your family Christmas lunch/dinners like? Have you got traditions that are kept up year after year? Do you have the same foods or does it vary each year? Does the family all come together where possible? Have you captured these memories and I don’t just mean photos? They don’t tell the stories behind the food on the table, or the decorations on the tree. If we don’t start recording our memories and traditions then they will simply disappear into the mists of future Christmas seasons.

Good luck!