Are you stuck listening to Let It Snow while figuring out how to crank your aircon?<\/p>\n
Most Australians can’t have chestnuts roasting on an open fire because there’s usually a fire ban in December.<\/p>\n
“Even my favourite carol line of all time, ‘let steeple bells be swungen’ is a little off for an Aussie summer,” says Vanessa Hughes, the presenter of ABC Classic Drive.<\/p>\n
Christmas Crackers<\/a><\/p>\n Turn up the volume for the holiday season with a curated selection of Christmas favourites from ABC Classic.<\/p>\n “Let pints in pubs be drunken” seems more apt for Christmas here,” she says.<\/p>\n But fear not.<\/p>\n From Carol of the Birds to Christmas in the Sun, Australian composers have been coming up with seasonally appropriate Christmas carols for decades.<\/p>\n “This year’s Classic Choir song ‘Christmas in the Sun’ perfectly captures our antipodean holiday vibes,” Hughes says.<\/p>\n These carols won’t give you brain freeze from dreaming of a white Christmas.<\/p>\n Classic Australian Christmas carols<\/p>\n If you’ve heard any Australian Christmas carols or sung them at school, there’s a good chance they’re by William G. James.<\/p>\n He composed three books of Australian Christmas carols.<\/p>\n One of James’s most famous carols is Carol of the Birds, sometimes called Orana based on the words of the chorus.<\/p>\n James had the Australian answer to Northern Hemisphere carols.<\/p>\n The Three Drovers, the Australian stand-in for shepherds, ride across the plain when the air is thick with summer heat and smoke is on the yellow moon.<\/p>\n Talking about Australian sky, The Silver Star, which has a lovely treble solo, is another famous tune by James.<\/p>\n Loading…<\/p>\n James was a longtime music director at the ABC.<\/p>\n Many of his tunes were published during his tenure and found their way into songbooks for primary schools in the ’50s and ’60s.<\/p>\n A summer celebration<\/p>\n More recently, ABC Classic has been expanding Australian Christmas carol collections with the Classic Choir songbook.\u00a0<\/p>\n If you grew up here, or have lived in Australia for some time, you know that Christmas falls in the summer.<\/p>\n We mark the season of sunshine by trying to stay cool, spending time with family and eating.<\/p>\n Many Australian Christmas carols immortalise these moments.<\/p>\n In 2020, when the COVID-19 lockdowns restricted our ability to sing or be with our loved ones, ABC Classic launched the virtual Classic Choir.<\/p>\n Deborah Cheetham Fraillon wrote Christmas With You, and 1,500 people submitted videos of themselves singing the song.<\/p>\n Loading…<\/p>\n In 2023, Gardening Australia host Clarence Slockee wrote new words for the classic, Oh Christmas Tree, honouring First Nations languages around Australia.composer.\u00a0<\/p>\n This Australian take of Oh Christmas Tree (Yerrbill with Clarence), was arranged by Joseph Twist.<\/p>\n Loading…<\/p>\n Other carols include Katie Noonan’s All is Love,<\/a> Elena Kats-Chernin’s quintessential Summer Together<\/a> and another addition from Cheetham Fraillon: The Christmas Card<\/a>.<\/p>\n After launching five successful carols, the Classic Choir project wraps up in 2025 with Joseph Twist’s brand new carol: Christmas in the Sun.<\/p>\n The carol will be premiered on December 14 by the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs at the Sydney Opera House, and broadcast live on ABC Classic at 2pm.<\/p>\n Aussie Christmas in pop culture<\/p>\n Over the years, Australian artists have written some Christmas hits which now reside deep in our collective psyche.<\/p>\n Comedy duo Colin Buchanan and Greg Champion, performing as Bucko & Champs, have adapted familiar Christmas jingles in an Australian context.<\/p>\n Most people would probably assign ultimate Christmas classic status to Paul Kelly’s 1996 ballad How To Make Gravy, about a man called Joe who writes a letter home from prison.<\/p>\n Loading…<\/p>\n The song became a movie in 2024, and earlier this year Kelly released Rita Wrote a Letter, which details what happens when Joe is released.<\/p>\n Other artists might not be as dramatic as Joe’s family, but as we all know, Christmas can be difficult for some.<\/p>\n