According to dairy farmer Valerie Crawford, there are many traditions at the Dixie Santa Night that you don't dare break — if you do, you'll be breaking the hearts of a dozen country kids who know exactly how the night is supposed to unfold.
"My favourite thing is when Santa throws out the lollies because we have to grab them and we get to eat them," explains five-year-old Kaytie Williamson.
Kaytie then explains the physics of how Santa gets to Dixie.
"He flies a car. He flies, like a sleigh, he sometimes goes in the fire truck and sometimes in the sleigh," Kaytie says.
"So the reindeers are magical. They pull him along and all the elves are in the back."
No doubt Kaytie was wondering how a grown adult who works for the ABC managed to get through life not knowing these life basics — asking so many silly questions.
Val Crawford is the driving force behind a team of helpers who make the Dixie Santa Night happen. She and husband Daryl say they do it for the kids, but it's easy to see the joy is as much for them.
"It's the social event of the year," Ms Crawford says.
As far as the local traditions go, each family brings a plate, a salad or a dessert, and pays $20 for a feed of cold meats.
There must be sugary desserts — and lots of them.
Pavlova, jelly, chocolates, vanilla slice, ginger ripple cakes, you name it.
And preferably in Christmas colours.
The kids must wait for Santa up on the stage, and Santa waits until dark to arrive.
Ms Crawford, who claims that she can't sing, has the job of leading the kids all in a discordant, chanted version of Jingle Bells.
Santa will arrive on the CFA truck, lollies will be thrown out of his sack, kids will scramble.
"He throws lollies into the crowd, he throws them onto the floor and the kids go mad," Ms Crawford says.
A long tradition
The Crawfords contend that the Dixie Santa night has been going continually for 86 years (with some uncertainty about the war years), and they know this because Mr Crawford has lived in Dixie all his life and he's been milking cows since he was a lad.
"I come from a family of five boys and we had 95 acres and milked 45 cows by hand," Mr Crawford said.
These days, the couple and some farmhands milk 250 cows — but not by hand.
Mr Crawford and his older brother have fond memories of going to the Dixie Santa Night when they were youngsters.
"I suppose the first one I went to, I was about four years old," he says.
"I was talking to my brother, he's 92 and he said: 'I don't know how they kept the ice cream cold in those days, but it was beautiful, and I've never forgotten, it was the first time I ever had raspberry cordial'."
So by that account, the tradition of children enjoying sugar-filled treats is as old as Christmas in Dixie.
There are others in Dixie who believe the Santa Night is an even longer tradition, perhaps even 100 years old.
But the chronology is less important than the uninterrupted promise of a simple, joyful tradition each year, a night that helps to keep a small community glued together, no matter what they have been through that week, that month, or that year.
"It's always a happy time of the year," Mr Crawford says.
"And we're going to make it this year, it's going to be another happy time, because we just have to have it," Ms Crawford adds.
"We must all get together and have fun, have a talk, listen to the Christmas music and look at all our beautiful decorations."
Last year due to COVID, Mr Crawford was worried they would have to cancel Christmas and so a team of organisers was plotting with Santa to take Christmas directly to the kids.
"We thought, we've still got to see Santa," he said.
"As a desperate attempt we thought we'd go around with a fire truck and visit the individual homes where the kids were."
This plan would have been no great hassle for Santa, since he visits every child in the world in a single evening. Piece of cake.
Even so, lockdown was lifted a week before Christmas and the party at the hall went ahead.
Decorating together brings joy
Like many Christmas functions, some of the real collectiveness and excitement happens in the preparations of the Dixie Hall.
This year, a team of around 10 people ranging in age from four to 84 were all helping, moving at pace.
COVID had allowed cobwebs to spread up into the high reaches of the roof, leaves were swept, and Daryl Crawford battled the wall of bird splatter with a lion's heart and a pressure-washer.
The tiny hall was transformed in two hours, ready to be packed with the majority of the population of Dixie on Saturday night.
Tradition
Dixie is not a town, it's a locality, a community of mostly dairy farmers bound together by location and 5am starts, thrown around in unison by the ups and downs of milk prices, the quality and timing of the rains, the severity of the fires.
And the place they most love to gather is the Dixie Hall.
Daryl Crawford is in his 80s and went to school next to the Dixie Hall. The school is long-gone but the hall remains, and is cared for and cherished by the people of Dixie.
"The Dixie Hall is a very important place for the people of Dixie to get together," he says.
"The people of Dixie go there and you can't get them home. It's the heart of Dixie.
"We've had weddings, funerals, we have casserole teas, summer BBQs.
"When we were younger there'd be kitchen teas. And dances around the district every week, there'd be sly grog in the car park."
These days Mr Crawford says the hall isn't used as often as when he was a young man but its importance is no less.
"Winter around here can be pretty rugged," he says.
"And there's nothing better to go down there when you think things can't get any worse and you talk to your neighbours and everybody comes home and feels better."
He understands the integral part that the hall plays in the well-being of the Dixie community, or any small community.
"There's nothing worse when you're driving along the roads and you see a disused hall and you think, that community's died."
"It's definitely the heart of the community, without that, there'd be no community, because where would people gather?" Mrs Crawford says.
It's obvious to an outsider that Daryl and Val Crawford can rest assured that the next generation is growing up with a love of the Dixie hall, mostly thanks to Santa.
