Last year on December 8 Dorothy & I flew back from Brisbane. We’d been invited by our good friends, the Stelzers, to be at their Christmas presentation of Outback Christmas (Robin S is the pastor of the big Lutheran community in the suburb of Rochedale). Over 25 years ago I wrote the music for Outback Christmas, originally a book with paintings by Pro Hart & a text by Norman Habel. Norm & I put together the OC show, with a lot of help from many people (Rod Boucher especially helped me, pushing me to produce 10 songs in 3 weeks!).
We shouldn’t even try to do Christmas in Australia the northern hemisphere way. As the song ‘Christmas where the gum trees grow’ says: ‘Christmas in Australia’s hot, cold & frosty is what it’s not!’
And this is not a unique idea – all around the world Christians tell the story in image, song & story setting it in their own place, their own history. Just as, centuries earlier, it was set in Italy, or Serbia or England.
So let’s sing about ‘the north wind is tossing the leaves’ or ‘the rabbits jump, the lizards crawl’ or ‘ours is a story of Christmas outback’.
More of this to come.
