‘We have nearly four hundred days to think about what we’ll eat,’ Jeff ventures.
‘And what about ham?’ Dad presses.
I do a double take in Dad’s direction but he doesn’t see, or acknowledge me if he has seen.
‘It’s tradition!’ he continues.
‘We never eat ham for Christmas in England,’ Jeff points out.
‘Well, good we’re not in England, then,’ Dad replies, quick as a wink.
‘Ever since we got Helga, I really can’t stand the sight of ham,’ I say forlornly.
A pig might seem an unlikely best friend for a former city slicker and corporate highflyer living on a vineyard in the Hunter Valley. When we first brought Helga home, she was about the size of a chihuahua and could usually be found asleep and snoring in my lap. She is the only one of our animals that I (with Jeff’s help) hand-reared from a young age. I used to cut her vegetables into tiny bite-sized pieces and arrange them carefully into a bento box so she could choose her favourite flavours and textures in order of preference.
For the first three months of her life, she lived inside with us, so we also painstakingly taught her how to use a litter tray, how to sit on command and to play fetch with us. This intruder into our home was not fondly welcomed by our cat Leroy, who consumed a considerable amount of my attention and also avoided Helga’s attempts at play time. I often took Helga to visit Mum and Dad or the neighbours and, once she was big enough, took her and our two goats Winston and Wesley for long walks around the property. When she grew too tired for the return leg, I’d pick her up and carry her back like a baby cradled in my arms, her fat pink belly huffing from the strain of her walk. Admittedly, that was over four years ago and she’s grown just a smidge since then, adding on maybe another . . . 150 kilos. It’s no longer practical to have her in the house, though I often wish that weren’t the case. She now lives with the other animals in what most other swine would undoubtedly consider the absolute lap of luxury. This is befitting the star of one of my previous books, after all – an animal who garnered way more public attention and affection than the book’s charming (yet modest) hero. Despite this clear universal affection for my piggy, Dad isn’t quite ready to let go of the notion that Christmas ham is a family tradition.
December tends to evoke the scents of fruit mince pies, eggnog, pine needles on a freshly trimmed tree, gingerbread . . . but not for me. For me, the smells of Christmas are baby sick and boiled meat.
I’ve come to the realisation that, for many of us, ‘family tradition’ means something only one person enjoys and others compromise on. In fact, for some, it can mean absolute torture. If I could have a dollar for every time I’ve heard ‘We need to have that at Christmas. It’s tradition!’ I’d be richer than a former American president who never pays tax.
A Christmas ham is just one of those things. Okay, I admit that having a pet pig who has a fairly solid social media following and who was a major factor in convincing me to give up eating all types of meat does make the idea of watching my family sit down to nibble on one of her relative’s massive hind legs particularly distressing. But in actual fact, no one in my family, not one of us eats ham any other day of the year. Why would we choose to fill up a third of the fridge with half a dead carcass wrapped in a wet tea towel for a single day in December? (Why a tea towel? And why does it have to be wet? No one has ever explained this.) And yet, despite our natural aversion to ham, it has become ‘tradition’ for my parents to seek out the best ham (read: cheapest) and leave it in their fridge for the four weeks leading up to Christmas, and three weeks post. How many pieces of meat can you name that last in the fridge for seven weeks?
Sometimes I forget this and open the fridge at my parents’ hoping to find Mum has played against type and hand-rolled some festive dairy-free white chocolate truffles for me to chain eat. For the record, this fantasy has remained just that.
‘Oh my God!’ I’ll shout, letting out a scream.
‘What? What is it?’ Mum will come running into the kitchen.
‘There’s a corpse in your fridge.’
‘Oh Toddy, give it a rest. It’s tradition.’
Day in, day out, Dad will take chunks of the sliced flesh to munch on while standing at the open fridge. Aside from Christmas dinner and Boxing Day breakfast, he’s the only one who partakes of the pinkish grey flesh.
Just when it’s teetering on expiry, as it develops that greasy feel and sour kind of smell, Mum will chuck the whole thing into a large pot with a bag of split peas and a kettle full of water, to fill the house with the appetising scent of over-boiled, almost-rotten pig. This too is tradition: her very special January Split Pea and Ham Soup. Even when I was a meat eater, I couldn’t quite stomach it.
Across Australia, families of all ‘traditions’ put on a wide array of cakes, puddings, tarts and (of course) the obligatory slop of trifle, but it simply can’t be called Christmas Day at the Alexanders’ unless my father gets ‘his’ fruit salad.
When I was younger, ours would be lovingly prepared by my nan, who meticulously diced a massive vat of fresh fruit of every colour into identically sized cubes. She would then smother them in sweetened cream and serve it, soup-like, with a ladle.
These days Dad is the only one who pines for this dish of Christmases past. Mum will ‘lovingly’ pour tins of soft machine-diced pears and peaches into a bowl alongside a hastily sliced banana and a small roughly cut apple. There’s no lemon juice, so the whole salad inevitably oxidises, turning a mottled brown within minutes of construction. Finally, she will add in half a chopped orange – a critical ingredient, because how would you curdle the thickened cream otherwise? Icing sugar is sprinkled generously over the top, so you’re left with a bowl of browned fruit and overly sugared cream that not only smells like kiddie chunder, but also has a strong visual similarity to it.
Yet, as long as Dad gets his bowlful, he will very happily sit at the head of the table noshing away, unconcerned that nobody else partakes, though he will offer some to every person at the table more than once. If, in the mayhem of getting everything and everyone else organised, the fruit salad has been forgotten, well, then you can expect that his Christmas will have been ruined. This will, of course, be all Mum’s fault and you might catch Dad sitting in front of an empty bowl with tears streaming down his face.
* * *
Because Charlie and Lucy live in Brisbane with one of their mums, Vicky, it’s not often we get to spend Christmas Day with them. I think it has only happened twice in sixteen years. This is just one of the realities of our non-traditional family set-up.
Over the years, as my friends have had children of their own, I’ve watched time and again the ensuing complications of where those kids need to be (or at least, are expected to be) on Christmas Day. For any parent with their parents to visit, this usually means dragging the kids from one side of the city to the other, meal deadlines to be met, urban traffic to be wrangled with. Drive for two hours. Eat. Drive for two hours. Eat. Drive for two hours. Sleep. Christmas Day can come to mean little more than being a taxi driver to please two sets of grandparents (if you’re lucky you might even have four), plus the added joy of taking on the role of hostage negotiator as you make concessions, promises and pleas with your child, whose tantrums have the whole family under siege. While I’m thankful that our kids’ location means we’re not required to take on these chauffeuring / hostage negotiator / therapist roles, not having them in the same state does have its drawbacks.
As a (usually) child-free couple, it has become compulsory for Jeff and me to make up the numbers at my parents on Christmas Day. The fact that Jeff’s family are located in the UK makes this even more of a non-negotiable. My brother Grant’s in-laws are in Sydney and interstate, so he and Bec have legitimate reasons not to spend each December 25th with the Alexanders. The same goes for Glen and James, who try to do one year in Australia and the next in Canada.
Now, speaking of traditions, the North Americans know how to do Christmas! The one Mum, Dad and I spent in 2003 near Niagara Falls with James’ family is still one of my all-time favourites (despite Jeff only coming to star in my life’s biopic a few years later). Of course, snow helped add to the beauty. It also helped that I have embraced James’ parents, Claire and Ron, as my Canadian parents. If Millie’s not out for Christmas that makes me one of the lucky few with a set in nearly every continent.
Objectively, that holiday was full of traditions but, because they weren’t my traditions (that is, at all familiar), I loved every single one. Even, dare I say, midnight mass on Christmas Eve, when Jude and I got a little tipsy before leaving for church (let’s face it, never a good combination for two trouble-making atheists) and ended up getting the giggles during hymn singing. Though Glen was a little disapproving, if Ron or Claire were offended, they did very well to hide it. I bellowed my best Demis Roussos impressions and Mum channelled her inner Nana Mouskouri. The more Mum laughed, the more brazen I got, until we were both out of breath, clutching our tummies and unable to breathe. Now that’s how to do Christmas!
Ron and Claire’s house was warm and cosy and elaborately decorated with all the Christmas trimmings. It was a picture-perfect winter wonderland and, when it got really cold, Mum and I went outside to catch snowflakes in our wine. Long before I became one of those fussy vegans, the eggnog, pumpkin pies, Claire’s world-famous crumbed chicken and all the delicious sides made it far removed from ham, beer and baby-sick fruit salad. It was everything I thought Christmas should be. I wondered if I would ever grow bored of those traditions.
Another Christmas I recall fondly was one I chose to spend partly on my own. I was single and living with two mates in Glebe, who were affectionately known as Patty P and Tommy Turbo. I think their nicknames give you the whole picture of what life was like in that share house. That Christmas, both the boys had gone to their respective families on Christmas Eve and, without their girlfriends or various other hangers-on, I was delightfully left on my own. Despite pressure from my family to join them on the 24th, I decided being alone was exactly what I wanted. I made myself a special meal, opened a bottle of wine and watched a Bette Midler concert on television. Bliss! I got to Mum and Dad’s bright and early on the 25th and no one really missed me.
One grand Alexander tradition was the singalong. For many years, when we were kids, every person in attendance was asked (forced) to sing a song, sometimes to an audience of up to forty or so immediate family members, friends and other relatives. It was so important, in fact, that some of us (read: Glen and I) would choose a song one or two months out from the event and practise it endlessly to make sure the performance would be delivered flawlessly. Dad often insisted Grant, Glen and I sing ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ a capella.
The challenge with continuing this little singalong tradition is that all three Alexander brothers happen to have fallen in love with people who would sooner pluck every hair from their head than sing a song in public. Suddenly, it could no longer be a condition of Alexander Christmas Party entry that you had a song in your repertoire. And once the rules were relaxed, even those who’d once conscientiously prepared for the three or four minutes of spotlight (so . . . only me) no longer felt the need to. Then also, over time, others stopped coming to our events and the only people left were just the eleven of us (grandparents, children, and Grant and Bec’s three girls) and that’s if we all happened to be close to Mum and Dad’s that Christmas.
Dad still tries some years. ‘Why don’t you sing “Do They Know It’s Christmas”, Skeet?’ he’ll say after fruit salad. And if I reluctantly agree, he’ll round up Glen next with ‘Give us a verse or two, Glenny?’ Then to Grant: ‘You’ll start it off won’t you, mate?’ But our days of a capella Christmas, it seems, are over.
It is all the extra people I miss the most. Is that what Mum and Dad also hanker for? Perhaps. On the few occasions James brings his parents from Canada they deliver that extra joyeux noël.
* * *
Another tradition my parents still observe is sending physical Christmas cards. Throughout childhood, in December the house would fill to the brim with Christmas greetings from near and far, but, over the years fewer cards have arrived in the letter box of Mr and Mrs Alexander, as electronic communications have taken over and, frankly, more of our parents’ relatives and acquaintances found the postal system too difficult to navigate from heaven.
These days, there are a dozen cards at best. I still enjoy reading them to see who’s remembered my parents. In their heyday, long handwritten messages updating the last year in the relevant family’s life would be inscribed inside. These days it’s basically a To Peter, Judy and Family, Love, Gay and Family.
The thing that makes Grant’s Christmas year is if our brother’s name is misspelled ‘Glenn’ and, for a rare double whammy on the same card, that mine is spelt ‘Tod’. That wish has been at the top of his list to Santa every year for nearly fifty years.
‘Have you thrown away your Christmas cards yet?’ I ask Mum as, in the mirror, I catch her finger poised to tap against the window again.
