At Christmas my 70-year-old mother loves nothing better than donning a velvet Santa suit and scaring the hell out of her grandchildren with her heavily-accented ‘Ho Ho Ho!’
At Easter, she’s no better, often popping on an Easter Bunny outfit – complete with lit cigarette dangling from paw – to hop around the garden after my two squealing girls.
“Dilvin, what does the Easter Bunny say to children?” she sometimes whispers from under her twitchy nose.
“The bunny doesn’t say anything, mum,” I reply, endlessly bemused by the woman who claims to be my mother. “Ah! I can never remember with the bloody rabbit.”
Of course she can’t; Turks don’t usually have Easter rabbits or Santa suits, but then, my family have always done things a little differently.
The year my mother erected her first Christmas tree was in 1970 – a few months after she arrived in Australia from her native Turkey. At the time, she had two young sons (I arrived much later) and a head full of doubts, but one very clear vision that her children would enjoy a quintessential Australian upbringing.
“I didn’t want any of you to feel you were any different to your friends,” she says.
As my brothers tell it, Christmas in our house began with the tree, but by the time I arrived in the late 70s, celebrations had escalated so that gifting, eating Christmas lunch and taking the obligatory Santa photos were all enthusiastically undertaken. If my mother’s mission was to make us all feel like regular Aussie kids, then the mission was a great success; I didn’t think we were different to any other family… until I became a teenager, that is.
“You know what your family is doing is wrong, don’t you?” came the first comment from a ‘concerned’ member of the Turkish community one evening after he clocked our ridiculously large tree during a visit.
“You know what your family is doing is wrong, don’t you?” came the first comment from a ‘concerned’ member of the Turkish community one evening after he clocked our ridiculously large tree during a visit.
“Your parents are going to be the logs than fan the flames of hell.” I didn’t pay much attention to his actual comment, but it did make me pause momentarily as I realised for the first time ever that were indeed the only Turkish family I knew of who celebrated Christmas (and enthusiastically at that).
No one else had the tree, or exchanged gifts or sat on Santa’s knee at the local Grace Bros (now Myer). But when I took my thoughts to my mother, her response was typically rated R and not suitable for print. Let’s just say my mother hotly contested his view that having a tree and some poultry on a particular day of the year automatically meant you were a bad person. She bought the Santa suit the following year.
Some 25 years later, I’m a mother of two and Christmas is a pretty big deal in our house. I love setting aside evenings to put decorations on the tree, singing carols badly in the car, and booking in sessions with the child psychologist after a day with my mother in her Santa outfit.
It isn’t complicated; it’s lovely, but everywhere I look, I see others within my community who are struggling to walk the line between the two cultures. This year, my cousin – finally buckling after eight years of pressure from her daughter – finally put up a Christmas tree of their own, but she’s wracked with guilt over what it all means.
“We don’t call it a Christmas tree, we call it a New Year tree and we’re not going to do presents,” she says, knowing all too well she’ll eventually do presents.
“We don’t call it a Christmas tree, we call it a New Year tree and we’re not going to do presents,” she says, knowing all too well she’ll eventually do presents.
Another cousin has finally allowed one Santa photo at her local shopping centre but she says this is where it stops. “The pressure from the kids to have Christmas like their friends is relentless and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she tells me. She reckons she’ll eventually do a small tree and gifts but hide it every time someone from within the community comes over. “I just can’t take the catty comments,” she confides.
She too has been fighting the good fight against Christmas for her kids for years but says she’s too tired to continue.
Sitting in the park this morning, I’m thinking about how mum probably got it right with her kids when a Jewish lady comes and sits with me. “The kids are begging me to ‘do’ Christmas’ this year and I think I’m probably going to cave in,” she says once we stumble upon the topic. She too has been fighting the good fight against Christmas for her kids for years but says she’s too tired to continue. “Let’s face it, religion is ridiculous anyway, so we might as well let our kids celebrate them all.”
Her comment is so perfect, I give her arm a squeeze and go home to sing Jingle Bell Rock loudly, and badly, at my kids.
