Also chiming in from the Caribbean here where we have the traditional Christmas carols as well as local ones like ‘How does Santa get in?’ and Santa riding on a donkey which are pretty funny calypsos. Originally from South Africa, I’m used to having a warm Christmas and am currently sitting in shorts and a tshirt cooking turkey :).
it’s rare to see snow in the SE of England at Christmas time - I can only recall a couple of years of it in 44 years on this earth, and then only a small amount. Late Jan-early Feb is more usual.
I’ve sung lots of Australian Christmas carols around the traps over many years, but **never ** that one.
My Mum loves Six White Boomers, but we long ago realised that she’s strange and has no taste in music. So we try to play it early in the day to get it over with as soon as possible. One year, we hid her tape of it, but she found it again and played it twice to get back at us 
We’ve been doing the cold meats, salad, bbq thing at Christmas for a long time now, in spite of having an Eastern European family background. Prawns and crayfish are the things I associate with a special Christmas meal, but we don’t always get that fancy.
Strangely enough, it looks like it’s going to be rather cool weather in Perth for Christmas this year - mid-20s temps, possibly rain. Very unusual.
I once bought little tiny flamingos to pull Santa’s sleigh on my lawn in rural Panama. My wife prevented me from doing it. The relationship began to go downhill at that point I think.
Hey we have songs that don’t involve snow (of course we have ALL the snow ones as well). Here are the favs (at my kindy) this year.
Pohutukawa tree (a native tree that just happens to have red flowers at Xmas. Aroha means love and Aotearoa means new Zealand. Oh and whero is red!)
I am a Pohutukawa seed
plant me in the ground and water me
plenty of sunshine is what I need
and this what you what you will see
Out will shoot a tiny twig
and it will continue to grow so big
Beautiful flowers of whero
the native tree of Aotearoa
Pohutukawa tree, Pohutukawa tree
New Zealands Chrsitmas tree
You fill our hearts with aroha
The native tree of Aotearoa.
Or the 12 days, gone kiwi style
On the first day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
A pukeko in a ponga tree
On the second day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
two kumera
And a pukeko in a ponga tree
On the third day of Christmas
…
and so on, until…
On the twelfth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Twelve piupius swinging
Eleven haka lessons
Ten juicy fish heads
Nine sacks of pipis
Eight plants of puha
Seven eels a swimming
Six pois a twirling
Five - big - fat - pigs !
Four huhu grubs
Three flax kits
Two kumera
And a pukeko in a ponga tree!
glossary!
A Pukeho is a native bird, it is a swamp dweller with as many brains as a chicken.
A Ponga is a tree fern.
A Kit is a bag traditionaly made by Maori from flax (a plant that makes for good weaving)
Kumera is NZ “sweet potato”. Very different from “sweet potato” YUM.
A huhu grub is the lava of a beetle that is apparently worth eating.
Pigs are pigs!
Poi are a ball on a string. A Moari traditonal dance implement.
Eels are eels!
Puha is watercress
Pipis are a shellfish
Juicy fish heads are…well fish heads that are juicy!
Haka is a Maori war challenge (you may have seen some New Zealand sportsperson playing ANY sport do it)
Piupius are Maori flax skirts
There is another very groovy number called "Christmas at the beach’ I won’t bore you with the lyrics but the next line involves packing Xmas hampers and heading for the beach.
Yes we sing Jingle Bells and Frosty and all that lot BUT we are aware it IS summer. We try to incorperate traditional with homemade/summer.
We realise Santa is frightfully over dressed BUT we know he comes down chimneys because they are not lit!
30 years growing up in Australia and I’d never heard it before moving to Canada, when I moved to Edmonton in the mid '90’s everyone kept asking how popular this song was in Australia and I had to admit I’d never heard it before. I’m kind of wishing it had stayed that way. Now at around this time of the year everywhere we go someone has to play that damned song.
But I like it! (yes, I have weird tastes).
There’s the classic recorded by Bing Crosby about Christmas in the tropic paradises
Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say,
On a bright Hawaiian Christmas Day,
That’s the island greeting that we send to you
From the land where palm trees sway,
Here we know that Christmas will be green and bright,
The sun to shine by day and all the stars at night,
Mele Kalikimaka is Hawaii’s way
To say “Merry Christmas to you.”
And an excellent cite and website:
http://hometown.aol.com/jesusandsue2/ChristmasHawaii.html
And how Christmas is celebrated in Hawaii:
http://www.melekalikimaka.com/customs.htm
Merry Christmas!
WAG “Peter the Pointed Beak Penguin”?
Calm Kiwi: A great post!