Christmas In July

Its cold here today. Last night the temperature went down to 8 degrees Celsius. We had to put the air conditioning on to heat the house up. The temperature will probably only rise to 21 degrees Celsius during the day.

You see I live in Queensland Australia and winter here is, well, not very cold. I annoy my shivering Australian friends by telling them “Hey, you think this is cold? Back in England people would be sunbathing in this. People would be queuing for hours on the motorway to get to a beach to get a sun tan if the weather was like this!”

It amused me recently to hear of a mini-UK heatwave when listening to the BBC’s internet radio service. The sun was out, and it was BIG NEWS. I could almost feel the spirit of the whole British population lift in joyous celebration at the arrival of sunshine, long summer days and temperatures way above zero. Gone the days of sludgy, wet and windy weather, for a short while at least.

Back to my Australian Friends. It seems that somewhere deep in the collective British-Australian colonial memory is a longing for a cold time, a christmas time, a time with all the trimmings, but most importantly it must be a bit chilly, as an excuse to put logs in a fireplace and feel a bit olde-worldy-egg-noggy. Up in the Australian Sunshine Coast hinterland they celebrate Christmas in July, the time when the place has a bit of chilly air about it, so we can dig out those old christmassy feelings again. Out come the twinkling lights, out come the inflatable santas, and out comes the winter woolies. Its an excuse to get all snuggly. I like it. There should be more snuggliness in the world, and if it means that we have to celebrate in an upside-down-topsy-turvey kind of way then I’m all for it.