As Christmas draws nearer and we finally have at least some snow in Finland, I started wondering:
A large amount of the Christmas songs playing on the radio right now have very wintery imagery in them. Sleigh bells in the snow, a white Christmas, snowmen, whatever. Now, this is all fine and well here in the North, where Christmastime is the cold, snowy time of year.
But what about people in the Southern Hemisphere? It’s getting to be summer there, right? (Or is it already?) Do the radio stations in Australia or South Africa, for example, play snow-themed Christmas music nevertheless? Or just Christmas songs that don’t deal with winter? Or do they play Christmas music at all? Please enlighten this northerner.
From a marketing, retail, and cultural point of view, Christmas is entirely reindeer, snow, and the like. We get all the same stuff you do. It’s weird, but we’re very used to it.
There have been some attempts at summery Australian carols, but the traditional ones still dominate.
It was 39C (over 100F) here today. It’s now a few minutes from midnight, all my doors and windows are open, and I’m shirtless, just wearing shorts. It’s still warm outside. Merry Christmas.
As TheLoadedDog said for Australia, so it is for New Zealand with regard to Christmas stuff in the music line, piped all over the place in malls and what-have-you. It’s no longer weird, just wearying. White Christmas and all the et ceteras.
While not technically in the southern hemisphere –
we sing our traditional Christmas carols in shorts - you haven’t enjoyed “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” until you have heard it played by a Caribbean steel drum band!
You don’t have to go as far as the Southern hemisphere to find snow-themed Christmas songs a bit out of place! Here in Austin, we get a dusting of snow every 10 years or so, and that’s about it. Most of the time, it’s gone within a few hours.
So, seeing inflatable snowmen on people’s lawns is odds, because most Austinites have never seen enough snow to build a snowman with. People in Florida or Southern California will tell you the same thing.
But our radio stations are still playing “Winter Wonderland,” “Let It Snow,” and “Jingle Bells.”
According to this site, there’s only about 7 cities in the US where you’re guaranteed a white Christmas. Coincidentally, I’m sitting in one of them, and I can report there will be no problem with the “white christmas” thing this year. Anyone want a box of snow?
I took a trip to New Zealand and Australia just before Christmas quite a few years ago. I broke up laughing when I heard “I’m dreaming of a white christmas” on the radio. Sure you are…
Yeah, I thought about that right after I posted. I mean, there’s no snow on Christmas in most of Europe either… But it’s still clearly a colder time of year than, say, June or July, while in the Southern Hemisphere, this is the hottest time of year.
It would be like…hmm. Well, a bad comparison, but like calling someone on the opposite side of the world when it’s noon at your place and singing the praises of the brightly-shining sun and the blue sky while the other person is looking around them and seeing the moon and stars. And then everyone else around them would start rejoicing about the sun and blue sky, even though it would clearly be night over there.
Logic has little to do with the traditional trappings of holiday celebrations. I just got back from a vacation in New Zealand and Singapore (which latter country is technically in the Northern Hemisphere, but just barely), and they were hip-deep in all the conventional Englishy reindeer-Santa-“Jingle Bells”-snow-themed stuff.
There are some adaptations to local climate in the celebrations—for instance, the Kiwis seem to have a tradition of Christmas beach barbecues, and call the December-flowering native red pohutukawa or rata their “Christmas flower” rather than the poinsettia—but it doesn’t seem to stop them singing about Frosty the Snowman and sleigh rides.
I feel kind of sorry for the guys who have to wear Santa Claus costumes. Must be murder dressing up in a red velvet suit and long white hair and beard when it’s freaking midsummer.
I grew up in a part of the Northern Hemisphere where it doesn’t snow, and we had the same stuff - snowmen and snowflakes painted on shop windows, etc. It’s weird.
Here in Australia we have everything you have, winter songs, snowflakes and “snow” made out of cotton wool. Christmas cards have snow on them. People associate Christmas with snow. Schools make their kids write Christmas poems and they are invariably about snow and winter and steaming mugs of cocoa. Then they learn to cut snowflakes out of white paper and stick them in their windows, and go home to eat hot Christmas roast and pudding in the 40 degree heat (that’s 104 for you Yanks). And then every now and then someone will point out that it’s stupid to pretend we’re in the northern hemisphere and attempt to make up for our [str]small collective penis[/str] lack of winter Christmas by going all the way to the other end of the cheesy spectrum and breaking out the surfing Santas/Australianised carols (think bastardised versions of the Twelve Days of Christmas with all the gifts replaced by stereotypical “Australian” fare)/Santa drinking beer/Santa in the desert/bush landscapes decorated with Christmas lights that make you wish for the snowflakes and steaming mugs of cocoa again.
Same thing in California. I find myself getting more and more cynical about it with each passing year. According to current predictions, it’s supposed to be 80F on Christmas here, and I may wear a Hawaiian shirt that day.
No, that’s the tourists, looking around for the snow and the mistletoe and wondering “Where th’ flip is everything??” We treat such deluded folk carefully. Usually give 'em some possum fur undies.
I’ve just come from a lunchtime Christmas carol gig in one of the shopping centres here in Sydney. We did all of the old favourites, basically because that’s what people expect. But we finished with an Australian-themed bracket, which went down very well. The best known of the Australian carols are probably:
None of the Australian Carols seem to get the airplay that the traditional Carols get, but Six White Boomers is probably one of the better-known Australian Christmas songs. Even so, my experience has been that it’s not often played.
Hey, it’s “dreaming”, not “expecting” or “looking forward to”.
So many of us have fairly recent European ancestry that it’s not surprising that our Carols reflect nostalgia towards European Christmases. I know that during the last 30 years, my family’s Christmas celebrations have shifted from the impractical hot roast lunch with hot pudding and hot cooks near fainting in the hot kitchen to the more sensible cold meats or a bbq and salads, and I get the feeling that other families are moving the same way. In a couple of hundred years or so, maybe we will finally have our own traditional Australian Summer Christmas that doesn’t draw so much from the Winter festivals of the Northern Hemisphere.
It’s now a few minutes from midnight, all my doors and windows are open, and I’m shirtless, just wearing shorts. It’s still warm outside. Merry Christmas.
