Christmas Day is and always has been my favourite day of the year. The nation stops to take a breather. Unlike other public holidays, there are no street parades or giant picnics to attend. Unless you count that church thing I’ve heard some people do, but I don’t know what that’s all about.
Christmas Day is a day to be with my family. We have nowhere we have to be, no obligations to anyone. The day starts with the present unwrapping ceremony. This usually takes several hours. Not because we have bought so many presents as part of some consumerist obsession, but because our ceremony is a big event. I am the host and I try to come up with as many jokes as I can about Christmas, politics, the year that’s been, our family, the nature of the presents, whatever. For the past few years I have fretted in the days leading up to Christmas that I must by now have run out of material. Surely there’s only so much comic material I can get out of Christmas. It’s not like they change the whole thing up from year to year. Yet somehow last year, despite the fact that we had far fewer presents than usual, we managed to stretch it out to two and a half hours. We have a witty family so the repartee keeps on flowing. When I become a famous poerformer and appear on This Is Your Life, hosted by Eddie Maguire, my parents will tell the tale of how I turned Xmas into a major performance every year, where I would often turn to the camera to deliver monologues.
I take genuine delight in giving presents to my family. In the past few years I have put considerable thought into what presents I will buy. I don’t necessarily spend a long time shopping or thinking about it, I just make sure that I come up with something that I think will truly make my family members happier. I buy things that are very suited to the person’s personality, and preferably something that has significance to our relationship.
Because I like to spread the spirit of giving as wide as possible, I give a lot of consideration to charities at Christmas time. My father loves coffee, so I have decided to buy him some fair trade coffee from Oxfam. Fair trade coffee is made in Africa by local farmers, and Oxfam pays them good, non-exploitative wages for their work. My mother loves hot chocolate so I will buy her some fair trade cocoa.
For one of my close friends I have decided to buy some of the gorgeous Christmas decorations sold by Oxfam and made by some of the world’s poorest people. And I may buy my mother a drum made in Africa to go with her Zimbabwean maracca, from Oxfam. As you can tell, they are one of my favourite charities, because they are very practical and concerned with helping people help themselves.
Another organisation committed to providing a hand up, not a hand out, are The Big Issue. I started buying the magazine from street vendors when I found out that the vendors are homeless and long term unemployed people. The vendors keep half the $4 they sell me the mag for. I think this is an excellent way to give people who are down a chance to rebuild themselves. It gives them a sense of independence and helps them get things they need. (Apparently, the organisation have just set up offices in Canberra). I have also found out that The Big Issue is an excellent read. Their usual cartoonist is the most biting and witty cartoonist in the country, and his cartoons are worth the cover price alone. But The Big Issue are also worth it for the way they will cover issues the mainstream media is too scared to touch, like domestic violence, homelessness and the impact of mining development on tribespeople. They also have some hilarious contributions from Helen Razer and Walkey Award winner Alan Attwood. And the page of quotes from the week are usually very funny, particularly the Downer to Earth section, featuring some of the more bizarre comments by our Foreign Minister.
I have decided to give a big contribution to Tear Australia, a Christian organisation that works in some of the world’s poorest communities. They sent out a gift catalogue a few weeks ago for Christmas. For $10 I can buy a mosquito net to help a family in Afghanistan protect itself against malaria, for $25 I can buy a rice bank for a Cambodian village to use and for $70 I can buy a toilet for a Burmese rural village to help sanitation. They seriously let you select the item that your donation can go towards, which I think is fantastic.
I will also be giving a big donation to the Australian Bush Heritage Fund, who are seeking to buy Ethabuka Station so they can create a wildlife haven in the Aussie outback. The 200,000 hectare property is home to the greatest diversity of small mammals and reptiles in the region. Over-grazing and uncontrolled wildfires, foxes, and cats have killed off a lot of Aussie animals there. Several threatened species live there and need protection. So to help our Aussie animals, I am making a donation to this worthy and very practical conservation cause. You see, all little Johnny’s talk about focussing on practical issues is actually having an influence on me!
Other than that, Christmas means a day swimming in the pool. It means relaxing on the couch, listening to the new CD my father has been bought. It means stuffing my face with delicious food made from recipes from all over the world: praise, praise immigration! It means sitting back and thinking about the really important people in my life. People you might know as Toblerone, Teegstar, Kitsunegari. People you might not know, like Snoozles, Al, Melissa, Eloise, Joel. It means thinking about how lucky I am to know friends like trina_p, Furry Canary, FishHead, Ronnie, Erin, Wayne. This year I will probably think about the bloggers I read who seem almost like friends, because I enjoy reading their blogs, people like Phoenixboi, Tbone, philomedy, myrrander, cactoblasta. And I will think about my family, who I love and how lucky I am to live in a country where that can be a reality. May you all have yourselves merry little Christmasses.