Catholic Christmas

Christmas in Australia is the main gift holidayChristmas in Australia, however, as in most countries of the world, is the main gift holiday. Give everything to everyone. They open gifts both on Christmas Day and December 26 - on Gift Day. If the item is not liked, it is packed again and carried back to stores - in this case, Australians always keep the checks.

Just before Christmas, bus drivers, shopkeepers and bank workers dress up in caps and deer horns. Santa goes to shopping malls and other crowded places to take gifts from children and take pictures. All the time preparing for Christmas and New Year holidays, Christmas songs and children’s choir are heard everywhere.

Platforms with fabulous characters pass through the cities and wind orchestras pass. This procession ends with a reindeer harness with a sleigh in which Santa Claus sits. In Adelaide, Santa Claus has his own Magic Cave, where the procession goes. Santa lives in this cave until Christmas, and anyone can visit him.

And on December 24, the life of Australian cities freezes for almost 4 days, everyone gathers with family, and the Christmas celebrations reach their climax. At Christmas, all family members come together, coming from all over the continent, and often from other countries. Traditionally, seafood dishes, a variety of salads and fruits, and, of course, turkey, familiar to Europeans, are on the Christmas table. Christmas dinner is most often held in the courtyard of the house, or the family goes to their favorite places for a traditional barbecue.

Do you think Christmas is just a few days? No, the Christmas season starts well before Christmas and lasts more than a month. In Adelaide, the official opening of the season is the Christmas Parade in mid-November, when Santa enters the city. This is an amazing and the largest phenomenon of this kind in the country, which has become a good tradition and one of the attractions of the capital of South Australia.

Seventy moving themed fairytale platforms and twenty brass bands, accompanied by hundreds of clowns, pirates, wooden soldiers and many other fairytale heroes, take part in a procession crossing the city center. Tens of thousands of Adelaide residents come to watch this enchanting procession. And, despite the length of the cavalcade, the burning November sun and thirty-five degrees of heat, the atmosphere of the holiday spills through the streets of the city, filling every corner.

How is this period different from the rest of Australia? Probably, the magical atmosphere of the holiday, which is mixed with the expectation of a miracle. People are getting closer, friendlier and kinder. There are Christmas lunches and lunches in the offices. There is incredible excitement in the shops. People run around looking for Christmas presents. Here and there in the big shopping malls you can hear live music and singing. Children's choirs, chamber ensembles, Dixielands, pianists perform. There are Christmas carols everywhere. On weekends in the morning, people gather in large and small groups for picnics - family, friendly, service.