Christmas here is summer and our extended family usually has a get together in afternoon on Christmas Day and summer holidays often start the next day. In Christchurch, December 25 sees the sun rise at 5.44am and set at 9.11pm, so often festivities carry on into the evening.
Christmas turkeys are often replaced by ham and new potatoes. We also eat many cooling desserts like Pavalova, Trifle, Ice cream in many forms and brandy snaps. After food, peole often play cricket or go to the beach, although given our location close to the sea, the weather can be erratic. Mostly you will get a sunny day with a high of between 18 and 30c, but 1 day in every 3 will be a gloomy overcast, windy or wet day with a high of around 13 - 15c making Xmas an indoor thing. Thats just the nature of our cool temperate climate, which gives us an average summer on par with the UK. Our family kids under 14 get a gift from the whole family worth up to $50, additional gifts are responsibility of the individual families after gift giving got out of hand in the later 1980s (I remember as one year I got heaps of family gifts, next year I got one and the year after I hit 14 and left the gift zone).
Trees are a big thing and artfical rules, as pine trees are seen as invasive pests in NZ and to get one home sized is hard given they grow fast, plus we frown at the wastage. Its better to buy a fake one from the Warehouse (Our Walmart or Aldi) for $19, than a real oen for $100 which drops needles and turns orange when waste companies refuse to pick it up. Cheap decorations are the rule and candy has really caught on since the 1990s, Santa is big here and the standard USA Coca cola type one rules, a few years ago some wokesters tried to introduce a Maori version called “Hana Koko” and it caused a sh!tstorm of anger and racism.
We also care for the poor and homeless and every year big missons and churches put on Xmas dinners for the homeless, along with food parcels for poor people, so they at least get some chicken, mince pies and crackers (More plastic rubbish filling up landfills). One year a dodgy Chinese tour party crashed the Auckland mission homeless dinner and the company even charged the hapless tourists for it!
Religion has little influence here, but many people will go to a Christmas service or mass. Given NZ only has 5,000 Jews out of 5.2 million people, Hanukkah is unknown outside their community and Muslims don't celebrate Xmas, so its mostly the 1.5 million or so practising Christians who keep the religious part alive. Xmas here is mostly presents for kids and eating and drinking too much on your summer holiday for everyone else. Its a secular and relaxed day which symbolises the beginning of the relaxed holiday season that stretches over new years and well into January (Many shops, offices and factories shut down on the last business day before the 25th and don't reopen until at least the first full week of January and even some well into January).
Most of our provinces also have their annual public holidays between January and March and thus will mean these parts of the country shut down. Auckland has theirs in the last Monday of January and Wellington the Monday before. These two areas cover most of the North Island and affect some 60% of our population, my Province - Canterbury has theirs in November, too soon as this year we got 13 degrees and rain and a freak snowstorm in the mountains.
Because of public holidays and schools not reopening until the end of January, this holiday mentality will drag on into February usually after the 6th which is a National Public holiday. Also late January and February are the warmest and most settled part of summer and the 13 degree rainy days you expect at Christmas sometimes, will not show up until at least early April in a bad year and May in a good one.
I love coins. Especially silver, gold and anything really old.
Member of the Royal Numismatic Society of New Zealand and the Auckland Numismatic Society
