Narrabeen Lakes, Christmas day, 1938

One of the more bizarre conversations I have had recently was with someone who was worried that ethnic migration to Australia was threatening the social fabric.

“Did you know that in some schools they can’t sing Christmas carols anymore? And we are, after all, a Christian country,” she said.
It was this bit I found jarring, not just because such a sturdy and unequivocal statement of religiosity was being made about a country that has widely been seen as the most secular in the Western world, but because earlier in the conversation the speaker had said she was an atheist.

While this struck me as contradictory at the time, it shouldn’t have. We have been inundated of late with world leaders using the rhetoric of religion to promote nationalist politics. Why be surprised it permeates society?

On further reflection, the connections she was making are even less surprising. Christmas – and indeed the concept of the Christian country – have never had solely religious meanings. Nor is it surprising that the desire to cling to the markers of Christmas become stronger as the way of life they represent seems threatened. Indeed there is a nice historical congruence in this clinging.

Nostalgia for the past played an important role in the very creation of the Christmas ‘traditions’ that my conversationalist held dear. Many symbols of the Christmas we know – Santa, stockings, trees, gift-giving, holidays and its child-centredness generally – arose among the English middle class between about 1830 and 1930. The institutionalisation of this form of Christmas among the well-to-do reflected not only their reverence for family ties, but also their nostalgia for a pre-industrial Olde Englande before satanic mills destroyed an imagined rural harmony.

The spread of Christmas ‘goodwill’ also represented the Victorians’ fear of the potential social anarchy arising from the huge gap between rich and poor. Middle-class philanthropists took Christmas rituals to the workhouses and prisons of industrial England well before the mass of the working-class population shared in them. The defining expression of the desire for Christmas to transform the miserable and selfish by encouraging generosity to the needy was Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, first published in 1843. With sales reaching 15,000 in its first year of publication, a goodly part of its appeal lay in promoting a ritual that looked as though it might help heal the social chasm in 19th century Britain.

In 19th century Australia, much popular journalism evoked the ‘Australian Christmas’ as custom inverted – Christmas dinner outdoors, boat trips, picnics and, as nationalism grew towards the end of the century, native birds and gumnut babies chirruping whimsical tidings on cards and from the pages of Christmas newspapers.

The slightly sentimental Dickensian literary strand that saw Christmas as ultimately redemptive was also transferred. One of the few times that Henry Lawson wrote of cooperation between squatters and selectors was his ballad Fire at Ross’s Farm. Its narrative reaches its climax as old enmities are buried and the fire is successfully beaten. The final lines resonate: “Two grimy hands in friendship joined/ And it was Christmas Day.”

Frank Cusack, the editor of a selection of Australian Christmas writings, concludes that while the essentially religious character of the festival varies, “the message of Christmas – Peace on earth to men of good will – is acceptable to all alike”.

But the goodwill is selectively bestowed. If Christmas is a malleable feast, and one of deep sentiment, it is not surprising that some are worried about threats to the way we celebrate it, and paradoxically use it as a symbol of exclusion – though it would seem such fears are unnecessary. In the wake of the Bali bombing last year, the overt expression of Christmas religiosity seemed to escalate in reaction against fears of religious terrorism.

And Christmas sentiment remains an avenue by which politicians try to smooth rifts their policies have made worse. In 1997, when Mr Howard launched the Christmas Bowl appeal in Canberra he spoke of our country as free, peaceful, united, richly endowed with material resources – all of which “puts a special obligation on all of us at Christmas which is a season of goodwill, a season of renewal … to remember those in our community who are less fortunate”. These are fine words from the leader of a government that has demonised welfare recipients and cut their benefits.

Perhaps the ultimate Australian inversion of the Christmas spirit of goodwill is the government’s refusal to find room for refugees in this free, peaceful, united, richly endowed country – sending them instead to the aptly named Christmas Island.

Anne O’Brien is a senior lecturer in the school of history.