December 18th, 2025Kyle’s Rant
Australia has an identity issue. Shopping for a Christmas card the other day, the choices were dismal. My choices were one beach Santa or a tonne of different winter scenes. Hot chocolate mugs by the fire, people snuggled up in the cold or fir trees dripping in tinsel and snow.
When are we going to get out own version of Christmas and for that matter do we need it? According to our 2021 Census, Christianity in its varying forms is the largest religion (43.9 per cent), but the largest group overall is “No Religion” (38.9 per cent), a significant rise from previous years, while other faiths like Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism also saw growth, reflecting a diversifying spiritual landscape with Christianity declining from over half the population.
I’m not trying to be a grinch, but it is a lot of pressure for one day of the year, spending time with all your loved ones you haven’t seen for the year – now there’s a reason for that.
I met a local woman the other day who talked with a sense of pride or was it competitiveness, that she was hosting 38 people for the big day. WTF. I couldn’t think of anything worse and more draining than putting together a hot lunch for that many hungry-gutted drunkards. And why would you have a hot lunch in the summer, it’s just another Northern Hemisphere tradition being pushed down our throats.
And the next day is not so happy for the earth, groaning as we push tonnes of landfill into it. Don’t get me wrong I love the holiday season, and I look forward to a good feed on the day, however I prefer to dine with people I actually like.
And I am not comfortable with the ‘buy now pay later’ pressure of the whole day. Last year we spent the day with my sister and her family and it was nice enough. However I watched as the kids savagely opened our carefully selected presents, gave them a curious look, popped them into a pile and moved on. It was like watching that cartoon Tasmanian Devil tear through a library.
I risked the skin being ripped from my arm as I intervened and moved our Christmas offerings to get them away from the growing rubbish wrapping paper pile. At the end of the day, those kids had no idea what we had given them and to that end I flew the gifted micro-drone to its new home at the top of a tree and they never noticed it had gone.
And if you’re into this whole Christian tradition, Christmas is now a far cry from what it was meant to be. It was simply a celebration of the birth of one JC, apparently the direct descendant of the big fella. And if you do pay some attention to the Christians’ guidebook, gluttony, as in a huge feast, is considered a sin.
The other sins are:
Pride: An excessive love of self and a belief in one’s own greatness or my insta-Christmas is better than yours.
Greed: An excessive love of and attachment to earthly goods.
Lust: Cracking on to the sister-in-law (not mine) in a drunken stupor.
Envy: Wishing you had received those tickets to Metallica.
Wrath: A classic family ending to a fiery Christmas afternoon.
Sloth: The usual post-Christmas lunch afternoon.
And if you do follow the letter of the law from the scriptures, I don’t think old mate wanted us to have a day off from abstaining from the sins.
But whatever you get up to, whatever you believe in and whatever you do have a great day and I’ll catch you next year…
