In Canada the severe and long-continued frosts convert a good deal of land and water into fields of ice, and skating is a very popular amusement of Christmastide. Sleighing is also very fashionable, and the large tracts of country covered with snow afford ample scope for the pastime. The jingle of the sleigh bells is heard in all the principal thoroughfares which at the season of the great winter festival present quite an animated appearance. The ears of the sleigh drivers are usually covered either by the cap or with a comforter, which in very cold weather is also wrapped over the mouth and nose.
"Christmas Day," says an English Colonist, "is spent quietly in our own houses. New Year's Day is the day of general rejoicing, when every one either visits or receives their friends: and so, thinking of the merry times we have had in Old England, and comparing them with the quietness of to-day, we feel more like strangers in a strange land than ever before.
"As a special treat, we are to have a real English Christmas dinner to-day, and our housekeeper has made a wonderful plum-pudding. The turkey is already steaming upon the table, and we soon fall to work upon him. He is well cooked, but there seems to be something wrong with his legs, which are so tough and sinewy that we come to the conclusion that he must have been training for a walking match. The rest of the dinner passes off very well, with the exception of the plum-pudding, which has to be brought to the table in a basin, as it firmly refuses to bind.
"After dinner we retire to the sitting-room, and sit round the stove talking, while those of us addicted to the fragrant weed have a quiet smoke. Thus passes Christmas afternoon.
"Tea-time soon comes round, and after we have refreshed ourselves, we resolve to end the day by paying a visit to a neighbour who possesses an American organ, and Christmas evening closes in to the music of those sweet old carols which that evening are heard over the whole world wherever an English colony is to be found."
Christmas in Australia.
Christmas festivities in Australia are carried on in what we should call "summer weather." There is no lack of good cheer and good living, but cold and snow are at this season unknown, and skating and snowballing, as a consequence, are sports unheard of at Christmastide by the youth in the Antipodes. Large parties and excursions are often arranged for spending a short time in the parks and fields, and Christmas picnics partake much of the character of English "gipsy-parties." The inhabitants being chiefly English, many of the ceremonies customary in English homes are observed, and the changes that are made are enforced for the most part by the difference in climate, and by the altered circumstances under which the various festivities are arranged.
In "A Summer Christmas," Douglas B. W. Sladen thus describes the Australian festivities:—
"The Christmas dinner was at two, And all that wealth or pains could do Was done to make it a success; And marks of female tastefulness, And traces of a lady's care, Were noticeable everywhere. The port was old, the champagne dry, And every kind of luxury Which Melbourne could supply was there. They had the staple Christmas fare, Roast beef and turkey (this was wild), Mince-pies, plum-pudding, rich and mild, One for the ladies, one designed For Mr. Forte's severer mind, Were on the board, yet in a way It did not seem like Christmas day With no gigantic beech yule-logs Blazing between the brass fire-dogs, And with 100° in the shade On the thermometer displayed. Nor were there Christmas offerings Of tasteful inexpensive things, Like those which one in England sends At Christmas to his kin and friends, Though the Professor with him took A present of a recent book For Lil and Madge and Mrs. Forte, And though a card of some new sort Had been arranged by Lil to face At breakfast everybody's place. When dinner ended nearly all Stole off to lounges in the hall. ... All save the two old folks and Lil, Who made their hearts expand and thrill By playing snatches, slow and clear, Of carols they'd been used to hear Of carols they'd been used to hear Some half a century ago At High Wick Manor, when the two Were bashful maidens: they talked on, Of England and what they had done On byegone Christmas nights at home, Of friends beyond the Northern foam, And friends beyond that other sea, Yet further—whither ceaselessly Travellers follow the old track, But whence no messenger comes back."
Christmas in New Zealand.