Holiday Spirit

*Melissa*

There’s nothing like being home for the holidays, or so they say. And this year, home for us is Adelaide. We spent our Christmas Eve enjoying my last ditch effort and trying to “feel Christmassy” by watching the Classis Ernest Saves Christmas, followed by a fantastic foreign film, Rare Exports, that puts a whole new spin on Santa Claus. I fell asleep, missing the phenomenal ending as usual, with anything BUT sugarplums dancing in my head.

The next morning we awoke to hot, moist air stuffing up the bedroom, and proceeded to the living room to enjoy the Australian Tradition of “Christmas Bon-bons”. No, no- much to my disappointment, these “bon-bon”s are not of the chocolate variety. These are bizarre “poppers”, where – similar to wishbones – one person is supposed to hold on to each end, pull (making a loud Popping sound) and then whoever gets the bigger half gets the “surprise” inside. Somehow, the cheap tissue paper crown, the even cheaper plastic ‘toy’, and the badly and often grammatically incorrect joke, leave a bit to be desired.

After enjoying a quick, simply brekkie out on the porch, we couldn’t resist heading down to the beach for a quick dip. It was 97 degrees out, hardly a few fluffy puffs of clouds in the bright blue sky, and it was Christmas morning. The beach was an obvious choice.

The swarms of traffic should have hinted that everyone was doing the normal holiday thing – running off to visit family, see Granny for dinner, drop in to say hi to the in-laws – but as we approached the beach, it became apparent that it wasn’t the case. We were surprised to see the sand so populated, and the bar on the corner was PACKED with hoards of people eating brunch (all wearing those cheap tissue paper popper crowns, I might add.) I couldn’t bring myself to wade any further than my ankles into the freezing cold Tasman Sea, but Chad dove in like a champ.

We couldn’t have timed our arrival at the Fuller’s house for Christmas lunch any better – walking in right as the food was ready to be devoured!! And boy, was it yummy! Chad and I got our first taste of a true aussie lamb roast, complete with home-made mint sauce (neither of which are my thing, I discovered) and we rounded out the meal with BBQ’d chicken, roasted tatos & sweet tatos, and an amazing pear & walnut salad. Before our dessert, the whole family brought out the ‘bon-bons’ and we all ended up wearing crowns and tinkering around with the badly made toys. They found a new joke to replace last years best (something about Why an elephant is big, grey, and wrinkly? And because if it were small, white, and round it would be an aspirin?) and they graciously gave Chad and me a present – chocolates for Chad, and an Aussie Slang Dictionary for me. We topped it off with our first experience with Pavlova and a yummy berry tart, giving it only a moment to settle before we had to scurry on to our next holiday endeavor.

Dale and Linda had generously gotten Chad and I gifts, which they greeted us with at the door. We were quite excited to get a box of BBQ sauces - much better than Chad’s secret Santa gift at the hospital!! Plus, green tea and a basket of homemade goodies! Mmm mmm! We had a delightful dinner with some Indian treats, some grilled lamb and beef bits – and yes! I made sure to throw a shrimp on the Barbie!! (It looked a bit silly grilling there all by itself, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity!) It was good fun to sit around, meet some silly new people, try some new wines, and ‘hang out’ – something our lack of social life leaves to be desired!

We got home late that night, and couldn’t resist gobbling down some of the goodies from our homemade bag, before drifting off sweetly into dreamland. It was to be a busy day on the 26^th – still Christmas Day back home in the states – and it was our time to call home to family.