Feeling the warmth of a cold Christmas

The holidays are often a time when migrants feel most foreign and homesick, but Christmas in New York is the time of year when I feel truly at home. A chill wind forced my nose inside my coat as I waited at the express bus stop on Sixth Ave. the other night. The sound of Christmas carols wafting out of a nearby store made me feel at peace with my surroundings. When I was growing up in Australia, Christmas lore described this scene exactly, right up to the air being thick with the aroma of roasting chestnuts and the glistening Christmas trees awash in lights.

Christmas reality Down Under was entirely different. An Australian prime minster once said that he wanted to avoid a conflict between the country’s history and its geography. He was referring to my home country being an outpost of Western culture on the far side of Asia, a conflict raging since the British first settled there. But there’s more than that to his insight. Everything there is the opposite: Day is night, winter is summer.

Australians never feel the conflict quite so strongly as we do at Christmas, celebrated at the surge of summer.

Everything around me in Manhattan, from the weather to the New Yorkers disappearing behind their shopping bags, rang true to what I had been raised to expect at this time of year. Christmas is a dark winter holiday made joyful by colorful lights, family and friends, gift giving and mulled wine. But drinking a tankard of hot steaming gluhwein in 80-degree heat is no fun.

In front of the Lord & Taylor department store windows earlier that day, my heavy coat zipped, my hands gloved, I felt the thrill of a kid looking into my own snow globe. It carried me back to the days when my mother took me on the train to the big city — Melbourne — to see the Myers department store windows.

We’d jostle our way through the noisy holiday crowds in stifling heat that left the sidewalk sticky against my sandals. The lines in front of the windows were long, but the wait was worth it. The enchanting display of reindeer, sleighs and cotton wool snow delighted us.

Looking into those windows all those years ago, I felt transported to a place very like the one I live in today, but with one notable difference. My childhood mind’s eye didn’t anticipate New York’s crazy holiday traffic that dashed my plans to swing by Barneys to check out their windows, and added two hours to my journey home to Queens.

Throughout my childhood and beyond, my family, like most Australians, stuck steadfastly to a “traditional” Christmas dinner: roast bird served piping hot, roast vegetables, hot plum pudding served with brandy butter or custard, and finally minced tarts, fruitcake and short bread.

Between renditions of Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas,” we’d gather around the table, the temperature outside often north of 100 degrees Fahrenheit and inside even hotter, and with sweat dripping down our faces tuck into our meal. As soon as it was digested, we’d nip over to the local pool for a swim.

That’s not to say I didn’t love Christmas, which was one of my favorite times. It’s just that it always seemed so bizarre to do these things in summer. During my teens, some Australians instigated a movement to celebrate Christmas in July, and some families did adopt a midwinter feast, but even as secular as Australia is, there is something about celebrating a holiday at the same time as everyone else who celebrates it does.

But imagine how happy I was the first Christmas I spent in America. I stepped inside my inlaws’ cozy home in Bayside, Queens, and suddenly all the ways I felt odd and out of place as a migrant melted away and I finally got to celebrate the Christmas of my childhood imaginings. At last, the food was in unison with the season.

And as for the mulled wine? Nothing could better warm the heart during what’s shaping up to be a real white Christmas.