I'm still wondering if I will be cooking a roast turkey for Christmas dinner, and if so, will I cook it the night beforehand and eat it the following day as cold meat. Normally our eldest daughter has to work on Christmas day so we have Christmas dinner when she can take time off work, not necessarily on the day. But this year she will be on holidays so we can have a proper Christmas for once.

...which I usually participate because I don't want to be stuck talking to people who seem to turn up at the gatherings and talking about there health problems the whole time

Give it 60 years and that'll be YOU doing that!

What kind of Christmas traditions do ya'll celebrate down that way? ie; do you open gifts on Christmas Eve or morning? What's the closest to "traditional" Christmas fare you eat there? I can imagine the weather helps out a lot too for certain gifts. Here if you get a bicycle for Christmas it's too stinkin' cold to go out and ride it very much, but down there I'd imagine you can drive it right out the front door laughing all the way to the beach.

Shadowlander, it really depends on your cultural background. My family is of German origin (we're descendants of the early settlers who came to South Australia in the late 1830's). As Aussies with German heritage, we traditionally open our presents on Christmas Eve, after our church's Christmas production. We sit and talk and play some Christmas music. We eat and drink and then open presents. Christmas is typically very warm to hot here, so we don't do traditional North American style Christmas. Christmas lunch varies from time to time, but we usually have maybe prawn cocktails (an entree, not drink), then cold meats (or a curry), salad and pasta dishes (or maybe even a BBQ instead of the cold meats) and finish up with ice cream and fruit salad or some variant of that dish. I've had turkey before but it would be served cold here. I've also experienced Christmas pudding but only on a few occasions.

You can get Christmas dinner at various hotels, restaurants and even clubs on Christmas Day. This is a good idea for a small family, if they can afford it, but you usually have to book early, in October. It is a great idea for people who have to work up till Christmas Day and who don't want the bother of preparing a huge meal and then spending Christmas afternoon, especially if it is hot, doing the washing up.

For many years we've had to fit in with family members who have had to work on Christmas day, not only our daughter in Sydney, but also my mother, before she passed away, just before Christmas, in 1986. One year, we were so annoyed at the usual deferral that we decided to book ourselves to our daughter's place of employment for just such a dinner, even though it was some distance from us. In the end, because we were her family, as well as paying guests, her boss told her she could have dinner with us, though she had to help compere the party.

Today we went to a club Christmas lunch, which was served buffet style. We enjoyed our choice of salad vegetables, like cherry tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce and onion rings, cole slaw, turkey or chicken with cranberry sauce, sliced ham with mustard if you want it, roast vegetables like potato and pumpkin and, if you prefer, curried prawns and rice. We could also have a fruit platter of slices of rockmelon (cantaloupe for Shadowland ), watermelon, pineapple, orange, strawberries and grapes. For dessert we could have individual raspberry pavlovas, but unfortunately they ran out, and so we had to content ourselves with little individual Christmas puddings with custard and cream.

Charities and charitable organisations, in particular the Sydney City Mission, the Salvation Army and, I think, The Smith Family and the Red Cross, also serve a Christmas dinner for the poor and homeless.

Here if you get a bicycle for Christmas it's too stinkin' cold to go out and ride it very much, but down there I'd imagine you can drive it right out the front door laughing all the way to the beach.

You could, if you get a bicycle for Christmas, but 50 km or more is a long way from here, especially if you are still learning to ride the bike. And then you have to find somewhere to keep your bicycle safely parked while you swim. We have four options: 1. A backyard swimming pool, where small children must be supervised every second they are anywhere within cooee of it. Our pool is fenced, but take your eyes off small children for even a second and they can get into danger. 2. The council swimming baths, if they are open for Christmas Day. 3. Paddling in river water down at the Nepean weir. Or, 4., jumping in and out of sprinklers to cool off.

Remember people, I'll say it now, Do have a very Merry and safe Christmas swimming season.

@shadow or suffer heat stroke halfway to the beach.( your one extreme and we are the other).

When I lived in Tasmania you could still have a traditional winter Christmas dinner without over heating. Since it does not get very hot there t any time of the year.

My mum is always given the task of bringing the dessert over which is usually a pavlova. Me and my sister usually make a few salads.

I suppose it's a misconception I have about Australia, but can you blame me? When you look at a map of Australia most (if not all) of the major cities are on the oceanfront: Sydney, Fremantle, Canberra, Darwin, Melbourne, and the rest. And then one has an idea that Ayers' Rock is somewhere in the middle It's funny, we had some friends from England come visit us one summer and they had this idea that they could take a short trip from our place in North Carolina down to Louisiana on the train and be back in time for dinner. Apparently you can do that in England depending on how far you need to go, but it's not quite as easy here because the map can be pretty misleading if you're from a smaller sized country and everyplace in the US is sprawl, really (which is a big reason why we have such a car-loving culture here). Traveling across Russia would probably throw a bunch of us off too if you viewed each area as a state and it took you 3 days to cross it in a car.

At any rate, it just was in my head that the average Australian could probably go out on Christmas and hit the waterfront/beach in their respect hometown and kick back with a few Castlemaine's in a beach chair.

Fremantle? Perth is much bigger! And you forgot Hobart and Adelaide!
But seriously, my friend had her cousin over from England awhile back and her cousin believed that they could nip down to Melbourne (from Adelaide) for lunch and then come home. She suspected the trip would take maybe one hour, but that would really take around ten hours (provided you're driving the speed limit and are having several breaks along the way). Australia is physically huge and there are often great distances between towns and cities.

Yeah but fremantle is much nicer. Good that he mentioned it.

@w4j I was walking around perth sometime late last year and a British group of people asked me how to get to Melbourne and if they could get there in an hour. I said it would take much longer than that. By plane it is 4ish hours. They were shocked and thought I was joking at first.

I want to experience a winter christmas. So instead of listening to relatives(some not even) going on about the heat making there something play they can go on about the cold making something else play up. HA

Do you guys have Christmas trees there? Stockings by the fireplace? Fireplaces? Is it "Father Christmas" I would assume over "Santa Claus"? And do you have the traditional 8 reindeer or do you also add Rudolph?

IloveFauns, yes, but Perth is much bigger than Fremantle.

Shadowlander, yes, we have Christmas trees. Stockings by the fireplace? No, some yes, but most of us don't even have fireplaces. Yes, we call him "Father Christmas" in Australia but he'll often be referred to as "Santa Claus". I'm not sure about the reindeer. I'm pretty sure Rudolph joins in and helps his 'brothers'.

Fremantle? Perth is much bigger! And you forgot Hobart and Adelaide! But seriously, my friend had her cousin over from England awhile back and her cousin believed that they could nip down to Melbourne (from Adelaide) for lunch and then come home.

I think Shadowlander mentioned Fremantle because it is actually on the coast, and has a bit of history, especially after the 1983 America's Cup. But, unless he was using a good atlas or a large map, I'm a bit astonished he'd mention Fremantle at all. Fremantle is the port for Perth, and probably considered to be a suburb. Though it really is a nice place to visit, especially the Maritime Museum there, and the markets on the wharves, it isn't all that far from Perth, about 10 train stops maximum from the CBD , I think. I suspect we are much further away from Sydney's CBD than Fremantle is from Perth's CBD.

Actually the journey between Adelaide and Melbourne is lovely, though the Great Ocean Road between Adelaide and Melbourne is a bit narrow and winds a lot. There is plenty to see at this time of year, such as Mt Gambier's Blue Lake, and Port Fairy, where there are these mutton birds which fly in of an evening to roost in burrows on Griffith Island, a lighthouse you can actually go in and see (at Cape Otway) and, of course, the 12 Apostles, though there are little more than half left. You can go up in a helicopter to see from the air, these natural rock formations slightly off the coastline. But to really enjoy it you need to allow at least a week.

@Shadowlander: Yes, we have ornamental reindeer. But, instead of reindeer, who don't like Australia's hot weather, Santa switches to Six white boomers (kangaroos) according to the eponymous song, which just might be played at the city carols by candlelight. Yes we have carol singing, on the front lawn at our church, in one of the local parks, or in Sydney in the Domain, or even in the Town Hall (if Clover Moore hasn't put a stop to them).

When I was young my grandma used to roast a chook for Christmas day, since there were only herself, her husband, myself and my mum, if she wasn't working on Christmas day. We'd have these plum puddings made in a pudding basin, with greaseproof paper firmly tied around the top with string. When we ate it, I'd find threepences and sixpences in them for luck, which were really good to collect and spend later. Unfortunately the currency changed in 1966 and we now have dollars and 5 cent pieces, which are made with nickel rather than silver, so you can't use them in the Christmas pudding even if they can be saved up for spending later on.

I believe this was an English custom and also wonder if anyone else did this with their Christmas pudding. My Scottish mother-in-law made what she called a Clootie dumpling, cooked in a cloth, and hung from the rafters until Christmas. It could be eaten either hot or in cold slices with butter. Sometimes we flambé the Christmas pudding so that it is really served hot. What are the customs with Christmas pudding elsewhere in Australia, or USA for that matter?

I m rather sour when it comes to christmas carols. They play them constantly at the shops and when I use to work in a shopping centre it drove me insane. Especially those Australian ones. Which leads me on to the crowds in the shop starting the weekend just been. It is horrible people get in the way, kids running around causing havoc, overrun of sales assistants working which leads to me being asked countless times if I want help( I know this is there job but I always avoid them after a while). With so many people around it becomes more stuffy when the weather is already hot enough.

Yes I am no fan to the lead up to christmas. I tend to avoid shopping centres and get all my presents in one trip.

Australian Christmas carols? Do share! I wish they'd play more of the traditional carols here. Most of it is the newfangled nonsense or older stuff that should never have survived longer than its first play. I'm looking at you, Feliz Navidad!

Hawaii is really the only state here that has a "warm" Christmas, and oftentimes Santa is portrayed as wearing a Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, and sipping on a pina collada . Anything like that down there? I'd love to see a few snapshots of Australian Santa being pulled by 6 white kangaroos.

What are the customs with Christmas pudding elsewhere in Australia, or USA for that matter?

I imagine that this varies in the US by whatever countries our ancestors came from. I've never had a Christmas pudding and I'm not sure I know anyone who has. Perhaps they're more common in areas like New England or other locations with English ancestry.

(There's a strong Scandinavian presence here in Minnesota, leading to another, rather odd, Christmas culinary delight, lutefisk, but I see that's come up in another thread. )