I’m taking a leaf out of the Christmas 2010 issue of Australian Gourmet Traveller that I was reading one recent Saturday whilst having a relaxing and enjoyable coffee at Caffè Duomo in the Block Arcade.  Jana Wendt wrote of her childhood experiences of Christmases here in Australia and relating them to her Czech background and their customs.  It is an interesting article and brought back memories of my German-background Weinachten traditions my mother continued for many years also.

Trimming a real pine tree with lots of silver tinsel to replicate snow, real white candles resting precariously on the branches, their melted wax making it look like snow once it had got onto the branches, and many homely and colourful ornaments rather than glittering ones, although her favourites were some beautiful fragile glass coloured baubles, large and small. Trimming the tree happened only the week before Christmas Eve.  I think of the tree and I smell the pine, and I see pine needles gradually gathering at the base during that week and afterwards until it was de-trimmed in mid-January.  It was a lovely refreshing smell and I always wanted to be near it.  Presents were wrapped and placed underneath the tree, no hint of Santa!  As with other European Noël festivities, gifts were exchanged on Christmas Eve, so that we could then think about greeting Christmas Day with a reverence for the birth of Jesus and what that meant. Sometimes we attended Midnight Mass, but that changed as we got older.

Empty colourful stockings were draped along the mantelpiece in the lounge room and there was an Advent twenty-four-days-to-Christmas card on which we opened a window on each day of December to reveal an image behind it that had an appropriate story leading up to Christmas Day.  I’m not sure who filled the stockings as we were not encouraged to believe in Santa, so I guessed it was either my mother and/or later, when she had re-married, that it was my stepfather as, somehow, with the thinking of a child, I thought it was quite in keeping that he would do something like that!

Food was a mixture.  Marzipan-filled Stollen, almonds and walnuts to be cracked open with a special German big nutcracker in the shape of a Prussian soldier (she came from a town in the old Prussian state), muscatels still on the vine in their box (my fondest memory as they were my favourite), chocolate covered marzipan bars, chocolate gold coins for luck spread around for us to find, Speculatius biscuits which were and still are absolutely scrumptious, as well as various other deliciousnesses.  A glass of egg-nog always got my heart racing as, at that stage, it was my first taste of alcohol.  Turkey, clove-pinned pineapple covered baked ham, cranberry sauce, roast vegetables and, of course, the Christmas fruit pudding with frozen egg-nog custard that melted beautifully and created a taste sensation in the mouth that one never forgot.  Christmas crackers to share and break together, and the wearing of the paper hats inside, along with the tiny toy, kept us in laughter throughout the meal.  Of course, we always ate too much, but it didn’t matter as we had Boxing Day to get over it.

Teenage years of Christmases changed once we moved to our hotel in the city.  Then they became more Australian in feel as most often we would have Christmas lunch at a city restaurant.  Working a seven-day week and also having to prepare Christmas lunch was a chore one didn’t want to face; one wanted a day off!

My mother always made our Christmases joyful, happy occasions that I will never forget.