Well it sounds like you are making the most of it, with so much celebration putting the tree up.

We were in Australia last year and it was weird. Santa came in on a jet ski, kids opened presents, there was a seafood buffet lunch, and the tinsel was really quite lost in the blazing sunshine. Then everybody went back to the beach, or whatever they were doing. It was low key. No need for a festival of light.

The defining thing about our northern Christmas is that we are all cooped up together in the dark and the cold, and forced to be jolly because there is no escape!

That's exactly it. Christmas exists- and has always existed- because of the need for a touch of magic in the middle of the long northern winter.

I spent 2 Christmases in Hawaii and yes, it was truly weird.

I can imagine. The Southern hemisphere ought to reschedule Xmas for its own winter. It would make a lot more sense.

Well, rather used to palm trees and fake snow in L.A. But then L.A. usually has palm trees and fake everything, so why not.

We Brits complain continually about our weather, but actually we rather enjoy it. I don't think I could stand endless sunshine.

It does get rather -- depressing from time to time. If you're a thinking type of person, that is.

That's the second time this weekend I've heard the word "autumnal," which I love...we were singing too robustly at yesterday's rehearsal for lessons and carols and Jim said the piece should sound more autumnal, more like wind in trees...

Anyway, that is a beautiful child in the photo, and I'm glad your tree is up.

It's a lovely word- redolent of deacying leaves and wood-smoke.

The photo (for me) captures the essence of Christmas: warm togetherness and sharing.

A tree decorating party sounds like just the thing!

Yes. :)

Christmas should be banned i hate it, it's all about money and people trying to be nice. They say merry Christmas and a happy new year what they really mean is have a crap Christmas and drop dead in the new year. Bah humbug to it all.............

I know what you mean.

And a Happy Christmas to all of you! It snowed here - just a bit - last night. Like the song says: "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas".
Now if we could only make the stores stop playing those horrible tacky seasonal songs that are nothing more than noise. There is so much really good Christmas music, even on non-religious notes, that they ought to be playing it.

I hate the forced jollity of so many Christmas songs.

I loathe non religious Xmas music without exception. Carols have a dignity and beauty, others are seriously annoying.

Santa is pulled along by white kangaroos. Everyone is in shorts and it feels very wrong!

Christmas is a midwinter festival. That's what it's for- to dispel the midwinter gloom. It makes no sense to celebrate it at mid-summer.

I've been trying to think of a modern Christmas song I like- and not succeeding. I guess I can stand Lennon's War is Over ditty- but he stole the tune and really it's not so much as Christmas song as a cunningly disguised piece of agit-prop.

It's part of a wider Australian malaise, as a nation I honestly believe most Aussies think they are a suburb of London. Maybe had the colonists had a time to develop away from the mother country it might have been different but the growth of Australia co-incided with the growth of communications technology.

And most of the north never gets any winter gloom, so by your logic they should have no Christmas at all!