Reasons why Christmas in Australia is a pale imitation:

Hardly anyone puts out Christmas lights. It's light until almost 9 pm this time of year anyway.

There's no Thanksgiving, so there's no day-after-Thanksgiving shopping madness day to set the tone.

No cold weather. Although Christmas started in the middle east, the northern hemisphere totally pwns it now. So much so that they spray fake snow on Christmas displays. (Today's forecast though: "Mostly cloudy with showers. Local hail and thunder. Fresh to strong and gusty southwest to southerly wind. High of 16C -- about 60F.")

A Christmas Story only shows on pay per view.

USA: A Charlie Brown Christmas. Melbourne: Illicit wombat/platypus love.

Christmas in the best of years has a melancholy feel to it, for me; particularly so this year. Missing family very much. The turkey's in the oven, though, and will be ready in an hour.

Update: I think we'll probably remember this as the Christmas that we went jogging and got hailed on! It seemed like hail at one point, at least.