With Love - Bogan Christmas and Wog Christmas

There are two Christmases in my life. There’s Wog Christmas and Bogan Christmas. I must stress that I do mean that in the most endearing way possible and to avoid confusion, I’ll keep referring to them by those names.

When I was younger I only knew Wog Christmas. It’s celebrated on the 7^th of January and no, I’m not Muslim, Hindu or Jewish. It’s still celebrating the birth of Christ, that’s why I still call it Christmas! (As soon as I say it’s on a different date, people assume it must be something completely different). Wog Christmas revolves around what most woggy celebrations do – Food. Lots of food. On Christmas Eve we would go to Church, which goes for a million hours, but we would go for the last couple – from 10pm onwards, and then we would head to someone’s house and meet with aunties, uncles and cousins for a ridiculous amount of food. 

Image Source - We do eat in chairs but the amount of food is the same!

Food after midnight you say? Yes, that’s right. We would eat after midnight like it was dinner time and then the adults would drink scotch and party like it’s 1999 (it actually was back then) usually until 3 or 4am. Then we would all meet again in the morning, which was Christmas Day and eat leftovers from our Midnight feast in a park somewhere. Where’s Santa? Where’s the presents? Where’s the backyard cricket? Well we didn’t really have that. My parents never tried to convince me that Santa existed – I know, I still have therapy because of it. Ironic huh? Actually, not believing in Santa didn’t scar me one bit. I know it is to the shock horror of my husband but I’m not a huge believer in lying to my children. These are the effects your upbringing have on you I guess.

I was lucky enough to become a part of Bogan Christmas when I met my husband. My first Aussie Christmas was, in my eyes, something out of a family sitcom. Beautifully decorated Christmas tree, loads of presents underneath, waking up in the morning handing out presents, then having the most amazing Christmas lunch, complete with Christmas crackers. Shit! I never realised people actually did that! It was just like on TV!

Image Source

 And hang on a minute, nobody was yelling, or arguing or laughing ridiculously loud. There was also nobody trying to shove food on your plate. You actually got to SERVE yourself! I was flabbergasted, and well, it was kind of nice!

Some people might shudder at the thought of having to celebrate Christmas twice but I actually enjoy it. These days Wog Christmas is a lot more subtle, and last year, actually DID involve lunch on Christmas day and presents for the kids...there was still all the noise and copious amounts of food though, but you can’t take that out. That’s not Wog Christmas, that’s Wog Blood.

I hope you all have a great Christmas, and if you do something different, I’d love you to share. Traditional is fantastic, but so is a little bit of flavour. I'm lucky to be a part of both.