Australian Christmas Traditions

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Christmas is celebrated with great gusto and festive fervor all around the world. The festival of Christmas has a universal appeal. Christmas is synonymous to things like Christmas tree, parties, decoration at home, family reunions and so on. Families spend quality time together during Christmas holiday season. They go out to buy Christmas tree and decorate it with ornaments, toppers, tinsel and so on. The homes are cleaned and decorated before the Christmas Eve. The entire atmosphere is filled with hope, joy and mirth. Everyone enjoys the holiday season. There is great fun and excitement in preparing food, cards and gifts for near and dear ones during the Christmas time.

Christmas has a lot of traditions. These traditions differ from one country to other. These Christmas traditions are related to family and activities done through out the festival season. In Australia, Christmas is celebrated with same fun but with some differences. During Christmas, there is summer in Australia. This is a big difference when compared to European countries that have winter. As there is summer, the traditional Christmas meals have cold snacks and beer. A lot of people enjoy spending the holidays at the beaches. The people celebrate Christmas outdoors. Santa Claus comes on a surfing boat at the beach to meet kids and distribute gifts.

Let's take a look at the Australian Christmas tradition:

The Australians love to have grilled food items outdoors on the barbeque. They grill Christmas food and serve it to the guests.
The activities like swimming, surfing, sailing are done during the Christmas holiday season
A lot of People gather together on Christmas Eve in Melbourne, light candles and sing carols till late hours. This is a huge event and is called as Carols by Candlelight. The stars in the sky and lighting candles give a scenic view accompanied with great Christmas music.
The houses are decorated with various types of ferns, palm and other evergreen leaves. All the summer flowers are used in decoration. There is a small plant with red flowers that bolls during the Christmas holiday season so it is called as Christmas bush
On the Christmas Eve families attend church services.
All the family members keep gifts under the Christmas tree on the Christmas Eve and open them on the morning of Christmas.
The traditional Christmas lunch is roasted turkey with ham. Plum pudding is served as dessert. The lunch has a lot of cold stuff due to the hot conditions
Playing cricket on beach or backyard of the home is an important Christmas tradition. All Australians watch the Boxing Day cricket match live on stadium or on television
Families go out for picnic to beaches and enjoy Christmas together.