HerCanberra’s Christmas traditions
Posted on
Christmas is all about tradition—and here at HerCanberra we have one or two we’d like to share.
From spending time with family and friends to baking up a storm to creating brand new traditions, here we share what makes our Christmases magical.
Erin Cross, Editorial Coordinator
My mum and I always like to say that we hate Christmas—although, that’s never been entirely true. But to help us “stick” to our cynical approach to the holiday, it’s become a yearly tradition in my house to watch The Grinch, groan when his heart grows, and sigh in disappointment when everything turns out happy in Whoville. We secretly love it.
For the last few years, I’ve also been taking on the tradition of making rum balls each year (you can find my gluten-free recipe here) to give as gifts….and eat all throughout the month of December. My mum has been making them for as long as I can remember and drinking rum (once I turned 18) while playing carols and rolling the little balls in coconut is one of my favourite memories. After all, a good Christmas dessert should be three things: easy to make, delicious, and just a little bit naughty.
Earlier this year I moved in with my partner but I’m hoping these traditions will continue with my mum as we add a few of our own, including make a gluten-free gingerbread house—and before you ask, no we’re not baking it. I found a nifty kit in Myer and all we have to do is stick it together with icing (and as an added bonus, my partner is an architect so at least I know the walls will be straight. This time.). And of course—even though I’ll roll my eyes and pretend I don’t care (I’m actually obsessed)—Christmas movies and putting up a tree is a must. My honest to god favourite Christmas movie? Barbie in the Nutcracker. Yes, still.
Emma Macdonald, Associate Editor
My most enduring Christmas food tradition has nothing to do with ham or turkey. Instead it revolves around fruit. Throughout my childhood and right up until I had a child of my own, my mum and I would spend Christmas Eve creating an elaborate fruit salad, housed in a giant hollowed-out watermelon shell. And because my mum was a gourmet cook with an eye for detail, our fruit salad would become a work of art.
It would be big enough to feed the loved ones we shared Christmas day with (usually my mum’s bestie Jenni McMullan and her family, hi Jen!) and would have enough left-overs to take to our gorgeous neighbours (the Finsterer family) that night. Nobody turned down our fruit salad. It would have every fruit under the sun—mango, cherries, kiwi, passionfruit, strawberries, blueberries, rockmelon, peach, nectarine, apricots, paw paw, pineapple, lychees, and, of course, the watermelon. Everything would be balled or sliced in small neat squares, and it would take us hours to create as we listened to music together (my mum loved jazz).
We would start in a spotless kitchen and by the end there would be juice, peel and cherry pips as far as the eye could see. So many flying pieces of fruit would often have us in complete stitches, and I recall how difficult cherry juice is to get out of white linen (my mum’s stock standard outfit of choice). After she died I would find it difficult to even walk into a fruit shop at Christmas time without crying, or anywhere in fact. Indeed it has taken a good few years for me to allow myself to lay the fruit salad tradition to rest because it was just too hard without her.
Yet with my daughter in tow two years ago, I reclaimed the watermelon fiesta in Val’s name. My daughter and I chopped, sliced and diced our way through a box-load of fresh fruit and I even taught her our trick of slicing star fruit and sticking them to the outside rim of the watermelon with toothpicks for added effect. It was a vision. I’ll be getting out my fruit baller this year too, and putting on some jazz while laughing at the flying cherry pips with my family. And you can bet it will feel like Val is right there in the kitchen with us.
Amanda Whitley, Founder
One of my most vivid (and fondest) childhood memories is of spending Christmas with my extended family. We would gather at my grandparents’ house in our hometown of Tarcutta (population 300), and relatives would descend from far and wide.
We would set a long, long table for 30 (in reality, a motley collection of mismatched tables of assorted heights and widths), which would groan under the weight of myriad dishes brought by all and sundry.
I remember ham, chicken, turkey, BBQ lamb and sausages, new potatoes with butter and parsley, hard boiled eggs, asparagus (tinned of course), my uncle’s special Waldorf Salad, some dodgy watermelon, onion and vinegar concoction my Dad and aunts raved over, and a rainbow of other culinary delights.
Then dessert…ohhh, dessert. Trifles, homemade meringues, pavlova and the booziest rum balls imagined (the town’s one policeman attended the year RBT was introduced, and breath-tested a guest after eating one of these little gems…apparently, it put her over the limit!)
After eating, and naps, and more eating, and quite a lot of drinking; the adults would play poker for matchsticks into the early hours, enjoying rare time together as a family unit.
It was a true celebration of family and food and it was always so special. It’s a theme that continues to run through our Christmas celebrations—now we gather at my husband’s parents house, where there are fewer of us, but the day is just as special.
Get four of my favourite Christmas recipes (including my mum-in-law’s incredible Smoked Trout Pâté here).
Dion Pretorius, Contributor
Christmas is a battleground each year, but not for the reasons you’d expect. For us the battle isn’t centered around family dramas, tension between cousins or the competition to buy the best present.
Our battleground is rice pudding and our prize is an almond.
My Scandinavian heritage means we celebrate on Christmas Eve and are crazy about decorations, presents and traditions. This means we sweat through a roast dinner every year in an effort to keep the Danish traditions alive, but none are more memorable than Risalamande. A traditional pudding made from rice, whipped cream, vanilla and almonds; it is served with cherry sauce and in one portion is hidden a single, elusive almond.
We usually sit around the table, eyeing each other off—weapons (spoons) in hand—as the bowl is set down and rotated to prevent any cheating by my mum, who has lovingly prepared a huge batch of dessert that will probably be breakfast the next day too, but who is not beyond treachery.
As first helpings are carefully chewed through so as not to crush the prize, so begins the mental warfare—a tirade of accusations and denials of who might have the almond hidden in their cheek.
By serving number three, someone usually relents after mouthfuls begin to slow and we have endured a tense half hour. Both my sister and I have introduced our partners to this annual tradition, who sit by, hoping against hope that they are not victorious lest they fall victim to the family’s wrath.
The almond means you get a small prize—scratchies or a trinket—which is likely discarded at the end of the evening. What everyone really wants, and something that endures the full year, is the knowledge you have bested the rest, and that you’ll be rewarded with quite a few more accusations at next year’s Christmas Eve dinner.
Laura Peppas, Senior Content Creator
After school finishes for the year one of our new traditions is decorating gingerbread cookies with the kids. This year, they are making a gingerbread train instead for an extra challenge.
I also like to get a little gingerbread candle which sits on the kitchen bench and makes the house smell amazing! Throughout December we have regular Christmas movie marathons to get us in the mood for the big day—my forever favourites are The Grinch and Home Alone 2, which I’m hoping to get the kids on board with this year!
Elaine Obran, Junior Journalist and Content Creator
Christmas for me, has always been a little unorthodox. Perhaps it was the all-barb wire Christmas tree my sister made that my mum would proudly display in the lounge room year after year (we have since moved to a more traditional tree due to the excessive near-death experiences). Or maybe it’s my Mum’s fierce resistance towards presents and deep hatred for cooking—leading to some wildly non-Christmas dishes making it to the table.
Yes, we have had sushi as a main course before. But what always remains a constant is the laughter and joyful noise that ripples through the house (and the occasional fight, but that’s a given). More often than not, we have those with nowhere else to go on Christmas joining us—those are always the best kind. Where a mix bag of people from all walks of life come together, eat delicious food (it has improved in recent years) and remind us of what this holiday is really all about.
We spend our evenings in the hot, dusty shed, where we battle out our grievances over our bird-stained table tennis table, where flip flops awkwardly dance, sweat pools and alliances quickly take form. And just before things get too heated, someone will mention that it’s time for dessert—and we all eagerly dig into a freshly chilled log cake.
Mum will usually say something along the lines of “this was the best Christmas yet,” and mouths full, we will harmoniously agree. Maybe I do have traditions after all?
Georgie Burgess, Junior Journalist and Content Creator
I definitely spent a good few weeks staring at my blinking cursor trying to think of what to write for this (and after several nudges that this really did have to be written) and many phone calls to my mum brainstorming ideas, I realised that I really, truly didn’t have any traditions.
As a little girl I definitely had a few more loose routines we had in place—such as barging into my mums room before the sun had even risen to show her the stocking that she had just placed at the end of my bed two hours beforehand, because she’d been busy up until then single-handedly building me a dollhouse.
Or as I got a bit older, placing our bets about key things we thought would happen throughout the day, there always has to be at least one argument—but the question was who would comment on my teenage clothing trends (did I really buy those jeans with the holes already in them?). This was all going on as we drove to get together with my large extended family, converging on which ever aunt, uncle or grandparents house we had chosen for the day.
But we didn’t really have a set place we went, or food we made, or movie we watched (I definitely shocked the office a little bit when they discovered how few Christmas flicks I’ve actually watched).
As I got older and moved hours away from home, the few somewhat traditions we had became even less noticeable. But the one and only tradition I still have is that no matter where we are, my mum and I make sure we spend Christmas day together.
Whether that means I make the drive home Christmas Eve just to turn around and drive back Boxing Day or something like the year we decided we just wanted to get away from it all and went hiking and Christmas lunch consisted of a picnic in the middle of the bush, throughout the years that has been my only constant—and it is a pretty good one to have.
Beatrice Smith, Online Editor
Growing up, Christmas in my household was always a rigidly-timetabled affair. Presents at the crack of dawn, followed by crepes for breakfast before a mad dress-up-and-dash to my dad’s family’s place for lunch followed by a slower yet no less mad dash to my mum’s family’s house for dinner. A fun and festive occasion, yes. A bit blurry? Also yes.
As the years wore on and families moved interstate and grew, my family has slowed the pace and I can honestly say it’s led to some of the best Christmases ever. Having a sister living overseas means highlights are a mid-morning FaceTime with her and a brunch of freshly baked cinnamon scrolls followed by a leisurely drive down the coast (trust me, if you can drive down Clyde Mountain on Christmas Day rather than Boxing Day—do it!) and home made pizza for dinner. Low key, yes. Heaven after a busy year? Also yes.
