Christmas in Australia: A Summer Christmas by the Beach and by Candlelight

Why is Christmas in summer in Australia?

Because Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere: when Europe and North America head into winter, it heads into summer. Christmas there still keeps the date and the European rituals brought by British settlers. December 25, December 26 and January 1 are public holidays across the country; only South Australia replaces Boxing Day, the 26th, with Proclamation Day.

The result is a slightly upside-down Christmas: since the holiday falls in high summer, Christmas TV specials are rare on Australian television. Santa keeps his red suit, but local illustrators and writers sometimes dress him in an Akubra, the felt hat of the stockmen, and a pair of thongs, the Australian word for flip-flops. On Bondi Beach in Sydney, surfing Santas have become one of the season's standard images.

Some Australians have ended up wanting a cold Christmas after all. That is the idea behind Christmas in July, celebrated in the middle of the southern winter: Canberra, for one, held a winter Christmas festival in July 2023. The British sovereign's Christmas message also adapted to the time difference: since 1959 it has been recorded in advance, so it can air earlier on Christmas Day in Australia and New Zealand. Its story is told in our article on Christmas in the UK.

What plants decorate an Australian Christmas?

Several native plants bloom just in time for Christmas and have taken its name. The Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra keeps a list of them. The best known is the New South Wales Christmas bush, *Ceratopetalum gummiferum*, a shrub that can grow to 5 meters. It bears white star-shaped flowers in late spring, and then in summer its calyces turn red, right in time for the holidays.

Christmas bells, of the genus *Blandfordia*, are red bell-shaped flowers tipped with yellow that grow in New South Wales and Queensland; a single spike can carry up to ten. The west has its own Christmas tree, the Western Australian Christmas tree, *Nuytsia floribunda*: a parasitic tree up to 10 meters tall that relies partly on a host plant and covers itself in brilliant yellow flowers in summer. It is almost impossible to grow in a garden.

In the nineteenth century these plants were the decorations. Sydney's newspapers kept the record: in 1879 the *Illustrated Sydney News* showed tree ferns being sold to dress up homes, in 1882 the *Sydney Mail* drew a boat loaded with Christmas bush being rowed to market, and in 1886 the *Illustrated Sydney News* pictured young women setting off to gather Christmas bells.

What do Australians eat for Christmas?

Christmas lunch on the 25th blends British heritage with the heat. The table holds prawns, oysters, ham and roast turkey or chicken. For dessert, the settlers' plum pudding with brandy butter shares the table with pavlova, a meringue cake topped with fresh fruit such as berries or kiwifruit. The Christmas pudding and its history are covered in our article on Christmas in the UK.

Seafood is so eagerly awaited that it has its own marathon. Every year the Sydney Fish Market trades nonstop for 36 hours, from 5 a.m. on December 23 to 5 p.m. on the 24th. In 2013, according to the public broadcaster SBS, it expected to sell more than 650 tonnes of seafood, including about 120 tonnes of prawns and 70,000 dozen oysters, to some 100,000 shoppers.

A menu like that suits an outdoor meal, and the image of a surfing Santa says plenty about where many Australians end the day. For a pavlova or holiday cookies to make with your kids, see our recipes. And to find out what children leave out for Santa in other countries, read our article on Santa's snack.

Where did Carols by Candlelight come from?

The story starts with a single image. On Christmas Eve 1937 in Melbourne, the radio announcer Norman Banks, of station 3KZ, saw through a window in St Kilda an elderly woman alone, her face lit only by a candle, singing *Away in a Manger* along with the radio. He wondered how many people spent Christmas alone, and decided to organize an outdoor carol singalong open to everyone.

The first Carols by Candlelight took place on Christmas Eve 1938 in Melbourne's Alexandra Gardens. About 10,000 people sang with candles in hand, backed by a small choir, two soloists and the band of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade. From that first year, Radio Australia produced and distributed the broadcast. The event stayed in the park for 21 years, then moved in 1959 to the newly built Sidney Myer Music Bowl, an open-air stage where crowds have reached 100,000. As early as 1949, *The Argus* newspaper called it the first Australian ceremony to attract worldwide attention.

Channel Nine has broadcast it since 1969, in color from the early 1970s. Now run by the charity Vision Australia, it funds the education of children and teens who are blind or have low vision. Norman Banks, who moved in 1952 from 3KZ to station 3AW, where he became a pioneer of talkback radio, retired in 1978 and died in 1985. The idea has spread: since 1983 Sydney has had its own Carols in the Domain, drawing up to 80,000 people, and candlelit carols are now held in many other places, as far as Coolangatta on the Gold Coast.

Does Australia have its own Christmas carols?

It does, and the best known were written by two men from the national broadcaster. William G. James, born in Ballarat in 1892, became the first Director of Music of the Australian Broadcasting Commission in 1931 and held the post until 1957. With John Wheeler, an ABC staff writer who supplied the words, he published *Five Australian Christmas Carols* in Melbourne in 1948, through the music publisher Chappell. The set contains *The Three Drovers*, *The Silver Stars Are in the Sky*, *Christmas Day*, *Carol of the Birds* and *Christmas Bush for His Adorning*.

The aim was to give the old Christmas themes an outback setting, and the titles say as much. Drovers, the stockmen who move cattle across the plains, take the road that travelers follow in the European carols, and the Christmas bush that blooms in Sydney in December, described above, becomes a decoration for the Child. *Carol of the Birds*, also known by the words of its chorus, *Orana Orana*, became the most famous of the five. James went on to write fifteen carols in three sets. A fourth set, composed in the 1970s and given to the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross, Sydney, has since been lost.

Other landmarks followed. In 1969 W. H. Keith Young published *Glimpses of Christmas: 20 Australian Carols*, which the Ephemera Society of Australia describes as the first Australian carol collection with words and music by the same author. In 1992 the children's entertainer Colin Buchanan recorded *Aussie Jingle Bells*, one of the few original Australian Christmas songs that most people in the country can sing along to. For more Christmas songs to sing at home, see our songs page.

What do Australians do on Boxing Day?

On December 26, sporting Australia has two big dates. The first is the Boxing Day Test, a five-day international cricket match that begins every December 26 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The fixture was formalized in 1980 by the Australian Cricket Board. On December 26, 2025, on the first day of an Ashes Test against England, 94,199 fans filled the ground, a cricket attendance record for the MCG, beating the 93,013 at the 2015 World Cup final.

The second leaves Sydney Harbour at 1 p.m.: the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, about 630 nautical miles to Tasmania. It was born from a cruise. In 1945, friends who had just founded a sailing club planned to sail together to Hobart; a visiting Royal Navy officer, Captain John Illingworth, suggested they make it a race. On December 26, 1945, nine boats started, and *Rani*, Illingworth's yacht, won in 6 days, 14 hours and 22 minutes.

The race is known for Bass Strait, with its strong winds and rough seas. In 1998 an exceptional storm hit the fleet; of 115 starters, only 44 reached Hobart. The record belongs to *Comanche*, which finished the course in 2017 in 1 day, 9 hours, 15 minutes and 24 seconds.

1. 1933Adelaide's first Christmas Pageant.
2. 1938First Carols by Candlelight in Melbourne.
3. 1945First Sydney to Hobart race, on December 26.
4. 1948William G. James and John Wheeler write Carol of the Birds.
5. 1959Carols by Candlelight moves to the Sidney Myer Music Bowl.
6. 1980The Boxing Day Test becomes a fixed date in Melbourne.
7. 1983First Carols in the Domain in Sydney.