Pipka Ulvilden remembers her first Christmas in the United States after her family immigrated from Europe to North Dakota. It was 1949, and she was 5 years old.
The author won the 1982 Booker with the true story of Jewish Holocaust survivors later immortalised in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. But does the Australian Catholic still think he was the right person to tell it?
Photo: Anna Kucera
It s hot
When all of your Christmas traditions, all of your Christmas myths and legends, and all of your Christmas memories are built around cold weather, I can imagine a hot Christmas would be pretty much unimaginable. And so it is that many visitors to Australia forget that the 25th of December is even happening.
But we have trees with snow
This has to be weird for first-time Australian Christmas goers. We have hot weather, but that doesn t stop us from indulging in all of the cultural touchstones of a cold-weather celebration – and that includes pine trees with fake show, and fake winter wonderlands in our shopping malls.