By Marie-Antoinette Issa.
Forget sleigh bells and snowflakes. In Australia, Christmas arrives not with the delicate scent of pine and gingerbread men, but with the unmistakable smell of someone incinerating Tiger prawns on the barbeque while loudly insisting they "know what they're doing.”
You’ll know the season has officially landed when the Woolies fruit aisle becomes a warzone of elbows and trolleys as people jostle for the ripest mangoes like they’re scattering for toilet paper during COVID.
It starts early. Probably in mid-November, when Mariah Carey (or Michael Buble) is defrosted and emerges like a festive poltergeist through shopping centre speakers. It's not until you crack open the esky and catch that first waft of Summer stone fruit that you realise how much Christmas in Australia is a truly sensory experience.
It’s the perfume of sunscreen – coconut oil SPF 50+, slathered with the precision of a baker icing gingerbread, except you're trying to stop Uncle Kev turning lobster-red before noon. It’s charcoal smoke curling off the barbeque, melding with sea salt and a whisper of panic as someone shouts, "Flip the prawns before they become rubber!” Too late. They already are.
It’s mango juice running down your forearm, sticky and saccharine and the hiss of a beer can cracking open before the first ball of the Ashes is bowled. It’s burnt pavlova sugar, because someone attempted Donna Hay’s blowtorch method and now your dessert is somewhere between ‘caramelised’ and ‘charred earth’.
Then there’s the unmistakable scent that can only be described as post-lunch nap sweat, mingling with eau de Aeroguard, chlorine and the distant aroma of citronella candles that are scientifically proven to work only when you’re not outside.
If your senses need additional stimulation, the aural universe provides. Some say the first sound of Christmas is Carols by Candlelight. Others argue it’s Tim Minchin’s ‘White Wine in the Sun’ playing softly in the background while someone sighs sentimentally into their Sav Blanc.
Maybe it’s crackers that give Nan a heart attack, or the regular rotation of Christmas movies like Home Alone, Grinch and Die Hard (don’t fight us.) Perhaps it’s the gentle ringing of the Boxing Day sales bell at David Jones, signifying that a different kind of battlefield is about to commence.
From scent and sound to taste, Xmas in Australia is a serious sensory cacophony.
There’s cold leg ham, carved in increasingly desperate slices as the day wears on. The first serving is elegant. By 3 pm, someone’s standing in front of the fridge door open, tearing off chunks while muttering, "No judgment.” There’s beer that’s been set out for Santa…before being consumed by Uncle Bob. There are cherries that taste like childhood holiday bliss and cost approximately $49 per kilo because nothing says ‘Christmas cheer’ like financial pain.
Gingerbread also makes an appearance. Although in Australia it serves less as a Winter warming treat and more as a decorative item until someone breaks it with their bare hands around 10.45 pm on Christmas Eve. Basil too. Though not always intentionally. It just ends up in everything. Salads, ham, cocktails, some kind of misguided basil and strawberry crostini your cousin swears she saw on TikTok.
If you’re lucky, someone will bring a trifle, layered with sponge cake, custard and three varieties of alcohol. If you’re really lucky, no one will bring a quinoa salad, because we all know it’s going home untouched.
By the time the sky turns golden and someone starts cutting the pavlova – half pristine meringue, half coal – there’ll be a collective sense of sticky satisfaction. The smells of char, fruit, sugar and beer will fade into the night air, replaced by mozzie repellent that is struggling to rise to the challenge.
That’s the magic of an Aussie Christmas. It’s loud, it’s sweaty, it’s entirely uncoordinated – and somehow, it’s perfect. A glorious medley of salt and sweetness, smoke and sunblock, sugar dust and sunscreen slick, carried by the soundtrack of lawnmowers, cricket scores and someone asking, "Has anyone seen the lighter for the pudding?” followed by, "Never mind. The pav will do.”
White Christmas? You can keep it. An Aussie Christmas smells like beer, tastes like BBQ prawns, sounds like a blistering over in the Boxing Day match. We think that’s bloody beautiful.
