Australian Thoughts at the Weekend. 19th December, 2009.

Australian Thoughts at the Weekend. 19th December, 2009.

The Colours of Christmas
What colour do you associate with Christmas? I wonder who answered with the song “I'm dreaming of a white Christmas”? Irving Berlin’s 1942 music and lyrics originally featured in the movie Holiday Inn starring Bing Crosby. However, this song still gives shape to the dreams of many today.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
Where the treetops glisten,
and children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
With every Christmas card I write
May your days be merry and bright
And may all your Christmases be white

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
With every Christmas card I write
May your days be merry and bright
And may all your Christmases be white

In Australia that is probably not a possibility. Some are probably wondering if the snow in England will hang around for Christmas Day. I would think some of my friends in Canada wish the snow would move on and let them dream of a “White Christmas”.

The nightmare of a white Christmas for some in Australian focuses on white and black ash from bushfires. The snowy white Christmas seems a distant dream for others while they endure heat in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit(38c)..

Some others will not be wanting a white Christmas as a fierce storm dumps tons of damaging hails on homes and every part of the landscape. The town of Armidale i In New South Wales, received an early white Christmas in 2006 when a severe stormed dumped damaging hail on the city. Hail of more than 50 centimetres thick blanketed parts of the city.

The five-minute storm brought flash flooding and high winds and stripped trees of their foliage. About 170 homes were damaged in the storm.

A news report said:

"A lot of homes have broken windows from the hail, which was described earlier this afternoon or this evening as anywhere between golf-ball to tennis-ball size," he said.

"One of the lasting impressions that came back from Armidale was that after the storm, there was about two foot of hail just lying around the place like a snow scape."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200612/s1816868.htm

Many Australian have a dream not for a white Christmas of any type but have a dream and a real prayer for a green Christmas. They pray for the drought to break with torrential rain. They would love to see their paddocks filled with green grass and the green of growing crops. However, they look out on the yellow of dying or dead grass and the earthy colours of dry dirt and dust.

Even home gardeners in some places who have been banned from hosing their lawns and can only put buckets of water on their gardens at regulated times would love to have a surround of green lawns and colourful gardens.

We do not have to wander far from thinking about gardens to think of some other green symbols of Christmas. Well not the gardens where I live. Holly does not grow here. The only place I will find holly is on a Christmas decoration. My mother had a couple of artificial glossy green sprigs of holly with bright red berries which she used for a good number of years as a decoration on a Christmas pudding or Christmas cake.

We do have ivy. In fact over the years we have shaped an ivy plant over wire to shape as a Christmas wreath. The months of shaping and clipping seem worth it when other decorations are added to these growing symbols.

A few people may have ‘live’ Christmas trees growing in pots or recently cut from a plantation or the thinnings from a forestry area. Most people however have an artificial tree. It is so much easier to take it out of its box each year and put it back again after Christmas. If the box is big enough the decorations can be left on from year to year.

Some would see a “green Christmas” as one that cares for the environment. In these days of “global warming” and of personal and sought after national responsibility to “save the earth”, there are those who not only make their own Christmas environmentally friendly but crusade that others do so as well. Many, of course, just se red when these campaigns are mentioned.

The colour red is prominent at Christmas but not only in Santa’s suit. Someone has written that even more than holly or ivy, more, even, than pine or spruce, poinsettia that has come to be the plant symbolise Christmas. The bright-red parts of the plant are not the flowers (they are tiny and white) but the bracts that surround the flowers. Now I am sure the person who wrote that was not an Australian. When I headed up a project which sold about $200,000 worth of Christmas Cards each year, I chose two cards with poinsettias on them. I continually heard the comment that the cards were “too American” and that the poinsettia was not Christmas here.

I remember when I first went to Sydney to live. The person I shared a house with came in quite excited one day telling us we had a “Christmas Bush” at our front gate. I went out to see what he was talking about and there was a small tree with a mass of whitish cream coloured flowers. I was still puzzled at his excitement. Then the flowers got darker in colour and appeared to be dying. Then I also noticed day by day the sepals of the developing seed capsules became a brilliant red and the whole bush appeared red. I saw the reason his excitement. My friend’s wife cut small branches off the tree and brought them into the house as decorations. They looked great.
(See http://farrer.csu.edu.au/ASGAP/gall2ae.html ).

When my wife and I had the pleasure of crossing “The ditch” to New Zealand for two weeks, we saw growing in profusion there another delightful shrub which as its “Australian” name indicates is native to that land. New Zealand Christmas bush with its red flowers was growing everywhere. The red flowers contrasted with the silvery olive green of the leaves. These bushes are featuring in gardens and parks in Australia but are relatively rare in Australian Christmas decorations.
(See: http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Oceania/Australia/photo409644.htm.

Some years ago on a Canadian United Church website, I was introduced to the idea of a Blue Christmas service. This was a special service for those people who feel a little more than a tinge of sadness at Christmas time because of love ones no longer there. A Canadian Anglican Church has also a “blue Christmas Service and says:

“Christmas time can be a very lonely, depressing, "blue" time for those grieving the loss of loved ones or other losses or for those who are all alone when others are partying and gathering with family members. A number of pastors concerned for those who find it difficult to "celebrate" at this time of year have developed various "Blue Christmas Services" to minister to these people. (http://ottawa.anglican.ca/blue.shtml)

There is more to helping people during this season than a Christmas Hamper or Dinner and a Christmas Carol or two. I hope we Salvationists never forget that. A Blue Christmas is a reality for many of us.

A number of singers, including Elvis, I think, have sung “Blue Christmas”,

Blue Christmas

I'll have a blue Christmas
without you;
I'll be so blue thinking about you.
Decorations of red
on a green Christmas tree
Won't mean a thing if
you're not here with me
I'll have a blue Christmas, that's certain;
And when that blue heartache starts hurting,
You'll be doing all right
with your Christmas of white,
but I'll have a blue, blue Christmas.
By B.Hayes, J.Johnson ©1948

Many Australian homes and home gardens have taken on a multi-colour Christmas with every Christmas image and symbol imaginable and coloured lights making a delightful scene. If you have seen the movie “National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation” you wil know the type of decorations I mean. However, Clarkm Griswold’s light show to some of today’s decorations is like the Wright Bothers’ plane compared to the latest Boeing 787 Dreamliner which made its maiden flight this week.

Today’s animated light shows are not only a string of light bulbs and spot lights on cardboard cut-outs but hundreds of thousands of lights, animated objects and music all driven by computers.

Thousands of people stand in awe and coach and mini-bus loads of others drive slowly past. It is a lovely relaxed atmosphere. When on a number of occasions in past years, the Gold Coast Temple Band played in one of these streets hundreds of people of all ages have stopped to listen.

Christmas in Australia takes on many colours. One way this is captured is in the “Australian Christmas Carols”.

Christmas Day

[Listen: http://www.salvoaudio.com/audio/music/mus_431.mp3 ]

The North Wind is tossing the leaves,
The red dust is over the town,
The sparrows are under the eaves,
And the grass in the paddock is brown;
As we lift up our voices and sing
To the Christ-Child the Heavenly King.

The tree-ferns in green gullies sway;
The cool stream flows silently by;
The joy bells are greeting the day,
And the chimes are adrift in the sky,
As we lift up our voices and sing
To the Christ-Child the Heavenly King.
Words and Music : William James

The Three Drovers

[Listen: http://www.salvoaudio.com/audio/music/mus_425.mp3]

Across the plains one Christmas night
Three drovers riding blithe and gay,
Looked up and saw a starry light
More radiant than the Milky Way;
And on their hearts such wonder fell,
They sang with joy. 'Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel!'

The air was dry with summer heat,
And smoke was on the yellow moon;
But from the heavens, faint and sweet,
Came floating down a wond'rous turn;
And as they heard, they sang full well
Those drovers three. 'Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel!'

The black swans flew across the sky,
The wild dog called across the plain,
The starry lustre blazed on high,
Still echoed on the heavenly strain;
And still they sang, 'Noel! Noel!'
Those drovers three. 'Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel!'
Words by John Wheeler.
Music by William G.James.


You can read more about Australian Christmas here: http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/christmas


Now in Ozzie:

I wish yous all a bonzer Chrissie and hope you get the urge to stop for a tick or three, shake the dust off your boots and pay your dues to the little bloke who was born in a cow shed and ended up using the food trough for a cot. Great stuff, that!

THEY CAME AT CHRISTMAS

In white shirts and caps on a truck they came
And stopped our kids’ street cricket game
They played a Christmas song or two
And then they called for us to sing
So we kids sang to everyone’s delight
Of baby Jesus birth on a Silent Night

Another Christmas they came again
After mum had told us with heartfelt pain
That this Christmas there would be no toys
And we were the saddest of girls and boys.
Mum told us there were many like us
And that we would not make a fuss
But simply enjoy whatever we could.

They came this time without the band
But they brought to us a Christmas grand
They put bags and boxes on our kitchen table.
They said they knew we were not able
To have the Christmas we would like
Because dad’s workplace was on strike.
Now their love gifts meant without his pay
We could celebrate with joy on Christmas Day.

Another Christmas they came to our place
They came again without the band
And they carried no gifts in their hand
But they came on a mission of love
They with tears said from their God above
And we knew they could do no more
Than pray for our dear brother lost in war.

Again this Christmas throughout this land
The Salvos will come with song and band.
They will come to some with food and toys
And somehow share in many Christmas joys.
They come that they might with everyone share
The very essence of the Christmas season where
In Bethlehem’s stable God’s gift Jesus was born.
(Author: Ray Reese - Christmas 2003)

Not Alone at Christmas

Joan lay all alone on this hot summer morn
The sun beaming in woke her just after dawn
It would be another day long and alone
Age had wearied her right to the bone.

With the dawning that this was Christmas Day
Her memories came of children at Christmas play
She remembered her own sisters and brothers
And a happy house crowded with so many others.

Then many years later when her children came
It was a happy house with kids just the same
There was laughter and food and presents of toys
Exactly right for each of the girls and boys

She thought of how they grew years quickly went
Then her eldest son to War in Vietnam was sent
Life about then seemed to become so very sad
As a heart attack took her husband the kids’ dad.

The other kids soon seemed to move on with life
As they took- for themselves a husband or wife
Kids were soon at play again but in distant places
And all Joan could do was remember their faces.

Joan lay all alone on this hot Christmas morn
Cards eagerly from their envelopes she had torn
Wishing Mother a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
Each with a message this Christmas they would not be here.

Joan lay on her bed lost in her thoughts once more
Soon there was a loud knock on the front door
Was it that a son or daughter had come to visit
She grabbed her gown and shouted “Who is it?”

She flung open the door to see who stood there
Joan saw the one person who really seemed to care
A cheery greeting and a wide smile a friendly face
A Blue Nurse had brought Christmas to Joan’s place.

The nurse handed Joan a small gift and a handmade card
And when they hugged she felt Joan hug so hard
A shower was soon done and Joan dressed in her best
She felt this Christmas she was specially blessed.

Not only at Christmas but every single day
A Blue Nurse calls to get her on her way
A life that alone is so long and people bare
Is broken by the Blue Nurse’s loving care.
Ray Reese
Christmas 2005

[A Blue Nurse is a domiciliary nurse of the Blue Care organisation, a part of the Uniting Church of Australia]

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This Christmas may our Saviour
enfold you with His Love;
May He fill your heart
with gladness
and blessings from above.

Ray
OzThoughts Internet Ministry.

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