Last year when I took my family to Community Christmas Day Lunch at the local town hall, they were a bit miffed given Christmas had been at mine for years.
I’d been volunteering at our local radio station and amidst all the community announcements, council updates and gig guides, the Christmas Day Community Lunch kept on coming up urging listeners to book early so as not to miss out. Really? I mean it sounded great and everything but surely our big old Victorian Gold Rush style town hall could accommodate everyone just rolling up on the day. The Community House was also offering free transport for those who needed it. You had to book early for that too.
I’d been to a few of the Community House’s weekly lunches when I’d first moved from Melbourne to the central Victorian town of Castlemaine thirteen years ago with my 9-year-old son but was still struggling with the transition. Surely there was no need to completely surrender my former identity in the city for something else, for something I didn’t understand yet or even really want in the first place. But I knew I couldn’t go on hiding from the present, so I’d determined to make more of an effort to immerse myself in community life. And those community lunches were splendid. All sorts would turn up. I’d made up some idea in my head that these people were not my kind of people, that we would have nothing in common. I was wrong. I liked that no one knew the old me. I even started to take friends visiting from Melbourne to Community Day Lunch as if I was introducing them to my community now.
Those weekly lunches became so popular that Castlemaine Community House decided to extend the idea to the Christmas Day Community Lunch at the town hall and so last year I took my ninety-year-old mum, my teenage nephew, and my reluctant twenty-year-old son along for the adventure. And it was funny and generous and a bit strange. The crowd was huge. Some people were all dressed up and others looked like they’d just walked in off the street to see what all the fuss was about. The food was great, the boys ended up playing with a scruffy old dog who’d come along with the old lady from down the road, and we all stood in line for the free banquet. Well, Mum didn’t stand in any line. When I’d search the crowd to check in with her every so often with a wave and a ‘I’m just getting us something to eat kind of a gesture’ she was always too busy talking to a stranger to notice.
The vast town hall was all decked out. It was noisy and colourful and chaotic and there were people from all kinds of families and situations. There was live Christmassy music up on the stage and whenever someone would grab the stand-up mic to announce something or other, the sound system was so rubbish, it was impossible to make out what they were saying. But it didn’t matter. We saw people we knew and others who remembered Mum but whom she couldn’t remember anymore. But it didn’t matter. The focus of our day was all outward, not inward. We were just 4 people out of 150 and it felt good. Not sad at all. A bit strange but not sad.
Ever since my sister died 13 years ago, Christmas day, any kind of festivity really, has been tough. Every year with the day looming, a day my sister always loved, I’d become nervous and try to act lighter for the kids and for Mum. We would all try and act as unbroken as we could even though my sister’s leaving us behind has shattered us beyond repair.
There are a few blokes in our small town living on the street or in the gardens. My nephew tells me that he and his mates ‘got him some blankets and food and stuff the other night’. He wants me to bring him to Christmas day lunch. A few others in town, women mainly, are living in tents near the caravan park. The other day on a walk in the gold diggings National Park I stumbled upon a semi-permanent living arrangement nestled amongst the bush. It’s rough terrain, rocky and it gets brutally hot in summer. There are hardly any rentals in town anymore but plenty of Airbnb’s. It’s a common story these days of course.
They reckon that this year’s Community House Christmas Day lunch will be the biggest yet.
I’ve just booked again. This time Mum asked me to. She forgets most things these days but that funny, open-hearted Christmas Day last year is not one of them.