It's a week before Christmas and it's 32°C here in Melbourne. That sentence explains nearly everything to contrast the "holidays" in Oz compared to the Bay Area. Thirty-two degrees Celsius, by the way, is 97°F according to my handy temperature conversion app on my phone. Temperature is one of the few items I haven't bothered to convert to metric on my phone. I use the conversion app when I'm cooking as well (e.g. 180°C is about 350° actually 356°F for the oven).
So it's hot in Melbourne even by Melbournian standards. They start to notice the temperature once it gets above 35°C though there's a certain toughness, resignation, "you'll be fine, mate" attitude here. It's not the stiff upper lip associated with the English but there's much less complaining or "whinging" here compared to the U.S. (note whinge: for veteran readers of the Letter, you can look that one up in a previous epistle).
We've entered our first real Victorian heatwave of the season. The temperature will get to 42°C (108°F!!!!!) in two days. We're lucky. Louie, our youngest son, is arriving tomorrow in Melbourne, via some rock shows in Japan. Then the three of us are off to Lorne via Port Campbell to spend four days and three nights exploring the Great Ocean Road. I'm told it's a California Route One type experience. I expect the temperatures to be 10 to 15 degrees lower (back to Fahrenheit) on the southern coast of Victoria (facing Antarctica - I still can't get over we're that close).
But I'm focusing on summer in the southern hemisphere because I think it explains a lot of the difference between our respective Christmas and New Year's celebrations. Some differences are clearly related to the temperature. The recipes in the newspapers are for barbecued items, not roasts. We've seen very few outdoor Christmas lights on homes. I told you in the last letter we were the only home with outdoor lights. Well, a week before Christmas two other homes on our street have a string of lights outside. We actually took one of our lights down as it struck us as ostentatious or vulgar. We've hung eight color changing solar lights over our front door and that's it.
Inside, however, is another story, where Denise has decorated our home with all kinds of icicle lights (makes no sense, does it?). Solar powered multicolored lights fill our patio backyard. I haven't seen a Christmas tree sales pop-up yard around, though I have noticed a couple of smaller live Christmas trees at the larger florist shops. But I have not see one evergreen tree tied to the top of a car being transported about here in Melbourne this summer. Again it's pretty hot for a live Christmas tree. We've got our own cute, weird, narrow white artificial tree in our living room (we had already decided, even in Piedmont, to give up buying a real tree for Xmas).
The sun is setting at 8:45 pm and it's light enough at 9:30 to partly explain why Christmas lights outside have not really taken off here Down Under. Young children, who would most appreciate Christmas outdoor light displays, are fast asleep by the time it's dark enough to truly get a sense of the lights outside. There apparently are some communities that are well known for their outdoor Christmas lights - around Melbourne, it's Ivanhoe. But Denise and I haven't been there. Yeah, it would get rather late for us old timers as well to drive out to appreciate them.
But it isn't just the lack of lights and the heat that is making this seem like a relatively low-key Christmas compared to the States. I've been out and about and there just isn't that sense of frantic, rampant consumerism here that we have in America. Since they don't celebrate Thanksgiving in Australia (remember convicts, not pilgrims, founded this country) there is no definitive start to the holiday "shopping season" (though waiting until after Thanksgiving to offer enticement sales is increasingly ignored by the large American retail chain companies).
There are no midnight or early post-Thanksgiving morning lines or build ups for best "the deals" before Christmas; no traffic alerts warning motorists to stay away from the so and so shopping center because of traffic gridlock; no examples in the media of exhausted, but happy (because they got it) or frustrated (because they didn't get it) shoppers.
There's Christmas music playing in some stores but shit ("shit" is a word that appears in the print media and even on store signs in Melbourne - suddenly I'm worried though, that putting this word in the Letter is going to have UCSF Big Brother spam after me again. I'll give this Letter with the word, "shit", a test run with some individuals before I bother to send out a bulk email). But shit! (I lost my train of thought.) It's a week before Christmas and just today did I start to get sick of hearing "The Little Drummer Boy" song at Woolies. Don't get me wrong; I like Christmas music when the Chieftains are playing it. But by the first week of December in the Bay Area, the relentless banality of the music in the service of sales is usually driving me crazy.
There are signs of Christmas in Melbourne but they seem subtle by American standards. From the tram on Swanston Street I saw any number of lovely Christmas stand displays. I've haven't been to the legendary store windows of David Jones or Myers department stores on the Bourke Street mall but I hope to get there with Louie and Denise on Christmas Eve. The three of us with a young friend are planning to attend the dress rehearsal of a 77-year-old tradition of candle lighting and Christmas music at the Sidney Myers Music Bowl on December 23rd. But once again, it's summer here, so we are bringing beach chairs, a blanket and picnic food because the gates open at 4 pm. All the seats are general admission on the lawn. It won't be over until 11 pm because, as I said, it only gets dark at 9:30.
We miss our close friends and family this time of year. But I appreciate what seems to me another example of the Australian, "no worries", type of attitude towards life - how Christmas is observed in Melbourne. This approach to living is refreshing to me. The Aussies have been very lucky - they seem to know it. They are a little worried that they are headed towards a more American style of life. They are deeply affected by our entertainment culture. They report on America's economic state and policies on a daily basis because of our influence over their economy and standard of living. But as 2015 is about to end, I'm enjoying how Australians are enjoying their present lives. I'll be sad to leave it in the middle of 2016.
I'm sure you've all been waiting expectantly for the bimonthly Down Under vocabulary lesson. Here we go:
•Dux (the VCEs have just come out) - the pupil who is academically first in a class or school (British 1800-10, from the Latin: literally leader, ducere, to lead)•A bogan (truly one of my most favorite Australian words, right up there with larrikin) - a derogatory description of a type of outback bum, low-life, redneck, "white trash"•"Come a cropper" - (informal) to fail; be struck by some misfortune - "and his brazen bid to force his way back into the cabinet came a cropper."•More Australian diminutives (e.g., Breakie, Expiry, Chrissy) bikie - obviously the diminutive for biker as in motorcycle gang banging biker•Firies - when I read this front page headline in the Age, "State Sets Watchdog on Firies," I really had no idea what they were referring to - I thought maybe fairies (spelled faeries here) but no, firies is the diminutive for firemen or firefighters (whatever you want to call them these days). Denise and I disagreed on the pronunciation of firies. She thought it was firies with a long "i" first syllable. I asked an Aussie buddy who pronounced it the way I guessed, as "fieries" as in "fire" with "ries" following. Go figure.
My Australian friend, Jason, who lives most of the time in the Bay Area, took some time to point out words with entirely different meanings in Oz compared to the U.S. The first word is Australian followed by the U.S. meaning:
•Pot plant = potted plant•Thongs = flip flops•Biscuit = cookie•Scone is pronounced skahn in Auzzie•He counsels to never say "fanny pack" in Oz because fanny is a taboo word. Funny, because Aussies seem to have fewer problems with words like "shit," "arse," and "balls" in conversation and print. •Finally torch = flashlight, footpath = sidewalk. And then there's the lift (elevator), lorry (truck) and trolley (shopping cart - previously discussed in one of the first Letters from Melbourne).
Be well and enjoy your holiday time whichever country, continent, or hemisphere you find yourself this Christmas. I hope to have one more Letter to you before we end 2015. Happy Chrissy (or Chrissie?).