Christmas Night, 1979

A backyard Hills Hoist clothesline - typical of 1970’s Australia

I wrote this poem while thinking about a Christmas night from my childhood, around 1979. After a long day at my grandparents’ house, Christmas dinner finished, dishes washed, dried, and put away, my grandmother would encourage us to drive across town to her sister Elsie’s place for “supper.”

We arrived late, as the light was disappearing. At this time of year in southern Australia its summer and it gets dark about 9pm. The house was full of great aunts and uncles and second cousins I barely knew. At the time, I didn’t understand what I was witnessing, but I remember how it felt.

There was a great effort being made by my grandmother and her sisters to bring the extended family together for a few hours. I later learned that several of my great uncles had already been in trouble with their wives for going at the pub together earlier that day. Christmas tradition allowed a few hours of opening, even on a sacred afternoon. By the time we arrived, the atmosphere had settled into something more subdued.

The men stood outside in the backyard or dozed in the lounge room. Three of my great uncles were Second World War veterans. One suffered from severe lung disease caused by his service. Another had survived a beach landing, in Borneo in 1945, where his company took heavy casualties. He was nineteen. He had been bayoneted while lying amongst his wounded and dying comrades, and somehow lived.

They never spoke about the war. If anyone did, it was their wives when they mentioned their husbands moods and bad dreams.

What I remember most is not what was said, but what I felt: the women moving purposefully through kitchens and living rooms, trying to keep things warm and together; the men out back smoking, talking around important things rather than about them, or disappearing into sleep. It was a brief glimpse into a much larger story I wouldn’t understand for many many years.

This poem isn’t an attempt to explain that world. The small-town, working-class adult world of the 1970s. It’s simply a remembering of being nine years old, feeling awkward and between worlds, sensing unease without language for it, and quietly watching and learning how adults carry what they’ve survived. Perhaps I was also learning how to contain my own feelings, how to keep certain thoughts to myself.

Christmas Night, 1979 is written in gratitude, for the fights I never had to fight, and with sadness for the people who did.

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Christmas Night, 1979

With the dishes finally done and dried,
Christmas dinner over for another year—
love in order,
a theatre of trying.

We are all candles
lit by generations past.

My grandmother is keen
to go to her sister’s for supper.
We are bundled into the car,
flat, already falling asleep.

At Aunt Elsie’s house
I don’t know where to be—
nine years old
in a world of neat concrete,
quiet driveways,
linoleum lines.

Women’s shoes everywhere.

I’m chased from beneath
a brown laminated table
heavy with casseroles,
leftover meat, rice salads,
beautiful bowls, cakes on plates.

Shooed outside.

Out the back, tall men—
no longer clean-shaven—
stand dark beneath the Hills Hoist,
on good behaviour,
too long at the pub again before dinner.

They talk about fishing.
Factory work.
Anything but their survival—
bayoneted on a Borneo beach,
lungs ruined in the jungles
of Stanley Range.

My grandfather, older
than his brothers-in-law
who didn’t go to war,
recognises the same thankfulness
he saw as a boy
in veterans who lived alone
in tin sheds.

The same shine in their eyes.

He doesn’t drink. Never has.
He watches them swaying,
hanging from the clothesline.
Looks at me.
Says nothing.

I am between worlds,
learning to keep my uneasiness
to myself.

Inside, supper is served.
I choose pavlova.
A little trifle.
Pears tasting of brandy.

Thankful
for the fights I haven’t fought.
Sad, too,
on Christmas night.

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This is part of a ongoing series exploring memory place, and stories we carry from the people who came before us.

If this resonated with you. If you have your own memories of family gatherings where more was left unsaid than spoken — I’d love to hear about this experience in the comment.

Thanks again for reading. Until next time…, Damian

P.S. The poem refers to my Grandfathers experience with veterans of the Great War living around him when he was a child. I wrote about that briefly in this post below :

Eric: A forgotten veteran of the Great War.