Is it the same for you, that Christmas always takes me back to childhood? For me that’s growing up on the black soil plains of the Darling Downs. We are primed for the much anticipated trip to get a Christmas Tree, kids piled in the back of the ute, bare feet “watching out” for the sharp axe. Traditionally it’s a Cyprus pine from the sandy country down the Leyburn Road. Its aroma and sticky resin are indelible.

The children’s Sunday School program on Christmas Eve is looming. A public test and graduation. Each of us would recite one or more Bible texts, the eldest ones naturally heavier the workload, that together retold the Christmas narrative, from Old Testament prophecies, a bewildering encounter with the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary. We wondered, what kind of a name is Virgin anyway and what does it mean. Archangels on the other hand were much easier to fathom and more useful, though the difference between Archangels and the regular kind was never really spelt out. Perhaps Archangels got special jobs like delivering embarrassing news to unsuspecting bystanders and had the power of visibility to call on. Apart from Archangels, these were the times when news came form the bible and ABC radio.

The three wise men who found the baby Jesus in a hay box by following a star, and then offered such implausible gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh, were a puzzle. The nativity pageant with annual dress up towels on our head forged a link between to the other time such garb was warn, going down to the Condamine for a swim down. One filled with performance anxiety and mystery and the other, just fun. What were those “wise” men thinking! Clearly they knew little about babies or perhaps they were the kind of adults that ignored kids and brought gifts for the parents, a virgin and a carpenter. Confusing stuff! My only other reference for such stuff was great uncle Walter, a bachelor who turned up at family events and played songs that no one knew on the piano. Tho as kids I suspect we confused wise with mysterious. One Christmas Uncle Walter offered us kids an apple that looked bright and juicy, clearly polished for the occasion. But actually it was just the skin. He had hollowed out all the flesh to play a trick on us. We didn’t get the joke. It was just weird and embarrassing for everyone.

The Christmas Eve evening service was a magnet for Christmas beetles and mozzies, especially those years with hot wet summers. The church lights threw a warm pool amongst the Morton Bay Ashes punctuating the expansive black soil plains. Us kids become excitable in the semi darkness and run around looking for possums peeping at us out of the edges of blackness. The presence of unknown life was reassuring as Christmas beetles, having deposited their eggs lay on their backs in their hundreds, legs raised clawing for the life force that was leaving them, a reminder of the slaughter fo the innocents perhaps.

After the service ended, all the kids received a book and a mixed bag of lollies and nuts in their shell. What with the relief of anxiety that our texts had been remembered and delivered to a doting congregation, the lolly fuelled overexcitement we set ourselves to the task of spotting possums in the shadows, all the talk of angels, virgins, stars in the east, wise men, shepherds and soldiers killing boy babies created an imagination overload. It was incredible to be alive, burstingly so. But the nuts in the bag of lollies gave us counter to our smug self satisfaction and pause for thought. Without a nutcracker the kernel was denied us, ever reminding us of our sinfulness in our earth bound condition in perpetual need of redemption.

Next day, a mob of rellies bustle up from the city for a day of too much food, a sleepy afternoon and a day of Christian conviviality. The grandfathers compare injuries and illnesses acquired from an eternity of back breaking farm work and disappointment. Being quite deaf, everyone shouts over the roast chook and leg ham. We snatch glimpses of the olden days from the weary storytellers as they drop anecdotes usually beginning with, “when I was a boy …”. Their stories tax our imaginations even more than virgins and archangels but have that same ring of undisputed truth. We are left with no need for super heroes, they are ours, even in their declining years, perhaps more so.

With their deafness a brief blessing, the Grandfathers nap to a gaggle of aunties finishing the washing up. Family news is interrupted with, “where does this go,” or “shall I put this here”. And when voices fall to a whisper you can be sure that a scandal has been hit upon, better not talked about at all but better you hear it now than from someone else.

Aunties tears dried and grandfathers refreshed, we bookend the season with a tour of the boundary fence, kids in the back of the ute, dogs running behind. The grandfathers change their mind at the last minute saying they’ve seen it all before and resume their earlier conversation. Maybe we’ll spot a koala, certainly the family of wallaroos living in the wooded country on the ridge and perhaps some kangaroos on the flat. Just make sure there’s enough time for our visitors to get home before dark.

Just us again, ill at ease until we find the traces of our everyday life, the fixed pattern that adds certainty to life as we know it. Perhaps tonight we’ll have a magnificent light show as a summer storm flash dances across horizon. We watch transfixed through the sunroom windows or in the shelter of the machinery shed if we are late in penning the milking cows overnight. We huddled close for comfort and protection, aware of our insignificance and assured that no mystery is beyond belief.