A Summer Christmas

Festive Christmas Breakfast table. Cupcake centrepiece,
 gold cutlery, hand written name baubles.

It has to be said. For many of us, Christmas is in summer.   For me the first Tuesday in November is the warning bell; the beginning of summer and the gateway to Christmas.   For that is Melbourne Cup Day and the jolting reminder that the end of the year is nigh. What? already? On that warm spring night the golden light starts stretching long shadows at 8pm and I think of sparkling tinsel and fur trees.  Christmas is around the corner.

Thanks to the gold rush, Melbourne was once the largest Victorian era city, outside of London, named after Lord Melbourne in the new colony named for his Queen.  So you don't get too much more Victorian than that.  No wonder then that the full Victorian Christmas tradition transplanted over here amongst the Anglo settlers.  The tradition and the city have pretty much grown up together.