Australia is not a country of many Christmas traditions. Prawns on the day can be pretty usual, families who insist on a hot lunch on a 30-degree day are still common enough while the rest of the country is enjoying cold ham, and Santas are still expected to dress in the full red suit.
But thanks to Australia’s extreme distances (my in-laws live the distance from Budapest to London away from my parents) and fewer jobs that shut down at Christmas, a quasi-tradition is orphan’s Christmas. Not permanent, but seasonal: Christmas away from family with friends or acquaintances or nobody.
My first Christmas away was when I was living three hours from home but had to work on the day, so after work I sat in my apartment complex’s pool and watched a holidaying family splash around and smile at me pityingly.
I was 18 and felt incredibly grown up in that cute way a teenager can find something as mundane as grocery shopping for themselves thrilling. Not only had I worked Christmas Day, I was alone. Two years later I was working again and my flatmates, all from Adelaide, could not afford the trip from Queensland for the holidays. It was my first proper orphan’s Christmas.
We had an ordinary barbecue and drank too much with nobody to tell us not to. Driving to the orphan’s Christmas from work I was pulled over by police who noticed the expired registration sticker on my car but in the spirit of Christmas decided to let me go without running the car through the system. (I recently told two Aboriginal men this story and they looked at each other before bursting into laughter: “That actually happens to white people?!”)
Since then I have spent Christmas in Ireland; at the beach with my boss; and once in my hometown being threatened by my mother that she will tell our dad about our bad behaviour in mass.
An orphan’s Christmas isn’t always the answer to a family-less Christmas. Psychologist and health centre director Suzanne Leckie, from Sane Australia, says loneliness is common at Christmas and it has been a hot topic for months on the organisation’s forums.
“There’s an enormous amount of loneliness,” she said. “People are alone because they literally don’t have friends or family, but sometimes people are lonely because they are forced into company with family and friends where they don’t feel accepted.
“We recently had a forum about whether to ignore Christmas. For some people that’s a better choice. Rather than thinking people are nestled with family having a lovely time, just treat it as a day with better food, or a day where you just treat yourself. We’ve been calling it ‘reclaim Christmas’.”
Leckie suggests people could take advantage of the empty streets and enjoy places that are usually packed.
Naturally there’s an app called Orphan Christmas, an Australian not-for-profit that allows people to invite others who don’t have friends or family close by to come over for Christmas.
Several bars and restaurants are advertising orphans’ Christmas specials, although not often on the big day. On Facebook In London a Muslim-owned restaurant has invited the homeless and the elderly to dine for free on Christmas Day.
Being away from home for Christmas is a discombobulating thing.
After 18 years of doing the same thing every Christmas – being surrounded by more than 30 aunts, uncles and cousins – there is suddenly just you waking up in a house with a tree branch hastily decorated with twinkling lights. The roads are empty, and people biting into luscious meals cheerily greet you as you pass their house while you have butter on toast for a late breakfast.
Then there is the strange intimacy with the ragtag group of people you end up sharing this exalted day with. Usually an orphan’s Christmas is an eclectic smattering of colleagues, friends and acquaintances’ cousins. Can this really be Christmas? Everything feels wrong. There’s no grandfather handing out the presents. And sometimes there are no presents.
Christmas away from home throws off the final shackles of your childhood. You find yourself among other adults, and everything has changed. You realise you can go weeks without hearing either of your parents’ voices, you choose what to eat at every meal, and nobody cares if you wear a hat or sunscreen when you’re outside.
All these impossibly grown-up things you had imagined for so long, and now you are alone at Christmas and you realise: I’m an adult.
I much prefer going home for Christmas.
What’s your experience of being apart from your family at Christmas? Tell us in comments below.
