Some traditions are best left with the Ghost of Christmas Past

Certainly, Australians were sentimental about the power of the “lucky sixpence”. A report in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph in January 1937 concerned a thief who may have committed the ultimate evil – stealing a lucky sixpence. Police alleged the man had committed a break and enter in Botany. He had in his pocket a little over nine shillings, “including a sixpence which looked as if it had been in a Christmas pudding”.

What a bastard!

The Christmas card is also dead, or near dead. It was once the most onerous task of the season. Thirty or so cards might be dispatched. One might be to a treasured relative overseas, but another would be to a couple who you may have met on holiday, although, all these years on, you can’t quite be sure. Still, they send you a card each year, and it would be impolite not to return the favour.

Meanwhile, over there in Austria or Saskatchewan or Scotland, a similarly confused couple are wondering about these mysterious Australians who somehow have their address.

Another change is with gift-giving. It’s become harder. In the years after the war, a well-presented orange might do the trick. A pineapple if you had tickets on yourself.

Then, in the ’70s, came the decade of socks and undies. Before trade barriers were removed by the Hawke Government in the mid-1980s, a pair of undies involved a large capital expenditure. Bank managers were consulted. Loose elastic was endured longer than can be easily imagined. Australian men spent most of their spare time conducting constant, somewhat surreptitious, adjustments. The gift of a new, snug pair would be the highlight of the festive season.

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By the ’80s and ‘90s, undies were so cheap that the gift-giver had to look elsewhere. Luckily, at just that point, technological change created “the CD Christmas” in which everyone would give everyone else a CD: to be precise, Whispering Jack. This was followed, in the late ’90s and early 2000, by “the DVD Christmas”, in which everyone would instead give everyone else a DVD: to be precise, Shrek.

Then half the nation got Spotify and said they no longer needed the gift of music, and they subscribed to a streamer and said they no longer needed the gift of TV or film. And others bought a Kindle and an Audible subscription and declared that even books no longer passed muster.

At this point, gift-giving became impossible which, after a few years of misery, led to a fresh idea: we should give each other an “experience”. This is why we all now give a voucher for rock climbing lessons, or a yoga session, or a cooking course, knowing the recipient will squeal with delight, before storing away the voucher and forgetting to ever use it.

So what of Christmas Future? My suggestion: a Non-Fungible Token, cooked into every pudding, and swappable for a longneck of beer.

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