I’ve never seen anything about this, but are the Christmas themes and traditions different from North America and Europe?
I can’t imagine “Frosty the Snowman” being played or Santa Claus wearing a heavy red velvet coat where Christmas is during the warm season.
I live in Panama. The local Christmas parade features Santa, reindeer, snowmen, and so forth. The malls play many of the same Christmas carols as in the US. Down at the park, there was a big evergreen tree where children could sit on Santa’s lap and have a photo taken.
This is largely the result of US Christmas themes spreading around the world. Panama is also highly Americanized compared to the rest of Latin America due to the long US presence in the Canal Zone. Historically, the Magi were featured as the ones who brought gifts to children, rather than Santa.
[QUOTE=Colibri]
I live in Panama. The local Christmas parade features Santa, reindeer, snowmen, and so forth. The malls play many of the same Christmas carols as in the US. Down at the park, there was a big evergreen tree where children could sit on Santa’s lap and have a photo taken.
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Not entirely related to my OP, but what exactly is the weather like in Panama? Is there a total lack of seasons?
Strangely enough, here in New Orleans, today is the first day in several weeks where the temperature isn’t even going to hit 60 degrees. The high yesterday was 75. It wasn’t really even cold on Christmas Day.
It seems (from looking at a map) that the little town of Bethlehem is on about the same latitude as New Orleans, so it probably wasn’t snowing when Jesus was born either.
We had our first White Christmas in recorded history in 2004 and it was just a slight accumulation.
I spent part of Christmas 2006 in Alice Springs. The shopping centre had plastic santas and reindeer, there were Christmas decorations everywhere, and we had a surreal experience sitting outdoors in a restaurant in 40+ degree heat while Christmas ballads played.
[QUOTE=jasonh300]
I’ve never seen anything about this, but are the Christmas themes and traditions different from North America and Europe?
I can’t imagine “Frosty the Snowman” being played or Santa Claus wearing a heavy red velvet coat where Christmas is during the warm season.
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Sorry to disillusion you, but growing up in Australia, i watched Frosty the Snowman on TV every year, and Aussie kids get their photo taken with Santa at the mall, just the same way that American kids do. Australians decorate their houses in similar ways, and most Australians also dream of the opportunity to have a white Christmas, even though it will never happen unless they travel overseas. All in all, Christmas really isn’t that different in Australia.
There are some differences, though.
Obviously, the weather is hot. This means that, for many Australians, Christmas dinner is served cold. My mother used to cook and ham and/or a turkey, but she would often do it the day before Christmas, as we would then have cold meat on Christmas Day. Instead of mashed potatoes and cooked vegetables, the accompaniments often include salads.
Also, very few people have live Christmas trees. I’m sure that some do, but in my experience most Christmas trees in Australia are the fake, put-together synthetic kind.
If you live near the coast, it’s not unusual for people to go to the beach on Christmas day. I’ve spent Christmas afternoon lying in the sun and swimming in the surf on quite a few occasions.
Australia has very few of the cultural debates over “Christmas” that you find in America. “Merry Christmas” is the standard holiday salutation, and no-one in Australia says “Happy holidays.” This is a reflection of historical and cultural circumstances.
Firstly, while large Australian cities like Sydney and Melbourne have decent-sized Jewish communities (45,000 and 50,000, respectively), Jewish culture is still far less prominent in Australia than it is in the United States. While most Australians probably know that Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday that occurs around Christmas time, it just doesn’t get the same publicity as it does in the US, especially in American cities with large Jewish populations like New York (about 2 million Jews).
Secondly, and probably more importantly, Australian culture is very secular compared to the United States.While saying “Merry Christmas” seems to be invested with considerable religious significance by many Americans (including some atheists who prefer to avoid Christian symbols), in Australia it really functions as an all-purpose, secular greeting. I don’t know a single practicing Christian in Australia, and yet everyone says “Merry Christmas.”
[QUOTE=mhendo]
and most Australians also dream of the opportunity to have a white Christmas, even though it will never happen unless they travel overseas.
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Christmas 2006 was met with front page photos of a Victorian fire engine which had been battling bushfires, and had “MERRY CHRISTMAS” written in the snow on the windscreen - on Christmas Day. Granted, you wouldn’t go skiing, but sometimes Australian Christmases aren’t what you’d think. I spent this Christmas at my sister’s house at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains. It was cool and foggy.
[QUOTE=jasonh300]
Not entirely related to my OP, but what exactly is the weather like in Panama? Is there a total lack of seasons?
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Tropical. Daytime temperatures are between 80-90 F year-round. There is a dry season from mid-December to late April; the rest of the year is the rainy season.
Christmas weather is bright and sunny. The trade winds have started to blow, and some of the trees have started to flower.
I spent three Christmases in New Zealand. As has been mentioned, Christmas Day dinner was usually cold meats. One year I spent Christmas at the beach.
[QUOTE=jasonh300]
It seems (from looking at a map) that the little town of Bethlehem is on about the same latitude as New Orleans, so it probably wasn’t snowing when Jesus was born either.
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Especially since he was born sometime in spring, not in winter. Thus the shepherds in the fields.
I’m disappointed that we can’t avoid the wintery theme of Christmas down in this part of the planet. But the facts are that the overwhelming majority of the symbols related to Christmas are wintery in nature, and they dominate the popular culture. Many down here have tried to be more summery in their Christmas portrayal where they can, but it just gets drowned out by some UK or US related themed product or entertainment that brings it right back, front and centre and unavoidable.
It was 86 degrees (F, obviously) here on Christmas Day (Central Florida). And from the mall speakers blared the sound of Jingle Bells…
As mhendo has said all our Christmas icons are pretty much in sync with the US.
Except for the Christmas lunch, while it used to be common (20+ years ago) to have the hot roast lunch, I believe you will find the majority of families sit down to a cold roast and salad lunch.
And what has become increasingly common in the last 5 or so years is the seafood lunch. A lot of families sit down to a big array of prawns, bugs & oysters.
My family does both, we usually have roast pork, chicken, turkey and ham (all cooked the day before) with salads, plus a bunch of seafood as well. (Why yes we do eat leftovers for the next week and more 
)
One Australian concession on the christmas carol front is adding in Six White Boomers to the repertoire. Which is basically a christmas song about Santa ditching the reindeers and hooking up six “snow white” kangaroos to his sled for his deliveries in Australia. 
The songs popularity seems to fade in and out year to year though.
Wife is Australian, from Perth (Leeming). She says Christmas was pretty much the same there as it is here in Texas, with the exception that they did have a tradition of going to the beach on Christmas day. She does not remember snowmen as a decorative motif, and she specifically remembers Santas in shorts as well as in the robe. Otherwise the songs and food and stuff were pretty much the same. Though its not exactly cold on Christmas day in Texas (usually) either.
I spent Christmas at a water park in Dubai… but the Malls have fake snow (and Mall of the Emirates has real snow at SkiDubai). There are christmas trees and Santa Claus just like in the US. They play all the same songs at the mall (but stop for the call to prayer). Christmas day was about 70 degrees F.
[QUOTE=Really Not All That Bright]
It was 86 degrees (F, obviously) here on Christmas Day (Central Florida). And from the mall speakers blared the sound of Jingle Bells…
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More or less what I was going to say. . . We had the air on on Christmas Day, as we often have to. “Winter Wonderland”, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”, and “Sleigh Ride” don’t have much of a significance here, but we still get to hear them just like everyone else.
It is however quite nippy here tonight, and tomorrow’s high (HIGH!) is forecast at 49 :eek:, but it’ll be back into the high 70s / low 80s by the weekend.
[QUOTE=GreedySmurf]
And what has become increasingly common in the last 5 or so years is the seafood lunch. A lot of families sit down to a big array of prawns, bugs & oysters.
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What are “bugs” in this context? In the U.S., “bugs” means “insects” (or “clandestine listening devices”); I’d assumed it was universal.
Santa has a rough time in NZ - half the hunters in the country are laying in wait with a .303, trying to bag a reindeer 
Given that we have inherited UK christmas traditions, the biggest difference is that Christmas is the start of the NZ summer break, and many people go away for the period from Christmas to mid January. Factories close, and everything else winds down while people are at the beach. That sort of does not happen in the UK.
Si
Last year, I saw much less of the usual “winter wonderland” stuff during our NZ Christmas. We’re heading back to the way we used to do things in the mid-19th century, which is great: celebrating our red-blossomed puhutukawa trees, the fact that it’s almost high summer, and just generally making it a Kiwi end-of-year festival.
Not quite the southern hemisphere, but I spent this Christmas in the Yucatan. Christmas trees everywhere, but much more emphasis on the creche than on Santa. I think one of the strongest images that will stick with me was a hurricane-wrecked apartment building in the Cancun Centro - the window held together with duct tape and a Christmas tree barely able to be seen through it. The usual Christmas songs were played, at least in the Zona Hotelera (the resort area), which I guess is to be expected. It was weird seeing Orion while night swimming in the Caribbean, though.
[QUOTE=jackelope]
What are “bugs” in this context? In the U.S., “bugs” means “insects” (or “clandestine listening devices”); I’d assumed it was universal.
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I assume it means some kind of crustacean - probably crayfish (crawfish) - AKA ‘mudbugs’ in some parts of the USA too, I believe.
[QUOTE=Ice Wolf]
Last year, I saw much less of the usual “winter wonderland” stuff during our NZ Christmas. We’re heading back to the way we used to do things in the mid-19th century, which is great: celebrating our red-blossomed puhutukawa trees, the fact that it’s almost high summer, and just generally making it a Kiwi end-of-year festival.
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There is a lot more awareness that our christmas is in the summer now. There are quite a few books with Santa in NZ. In one Santa come to NZ for a holiday to get ready for Christmas, he travels the country in shorts and singlet. There is also a gorgeous version of the night before Christmas when Santa drives a tractor led by 12 sheep.
We also have a few original songs