What’s it like to celebrate Christmas in the southern hemisphere? Are there things about Christmas that don’t make sense in summer?

Things mentioned in this podcast:

• Was Jesus born on 25 December?
• Average monthly temperature of cities
• Things to do in Wichita at Christmas

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Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Nick Hare, Peter Coghill and Sara Nonu of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing whether Christmas should be in winter. Nick, should Christmas be in winter? Yeah and your first response might be well that's a

silly question because Christmas is in winter whether you like it or not but I'm here to tell you that that's not true. Now Sarah has recently joined Aleph Insights and excitingly is from New Zealand. Okay. And it turns out that it's Christmas there but also summer. What? So I mean and I remember one of my supply teachers who was Australian when I was at primary school said that it was Christmas holidays and it was summer Dan and I literally did not believe her. That blew your mind. I didn't believe her I just thought well don't be ridiculous it must be winter. Anyway so it's good that we got Sarah here because she can tell us what it's like having Christmas in summer and then I can explain why that's totally wrong. Yes quite. And that Christmas

must be in winter. So we will come back to you but Peter, so Nick has just said that Christmas must be in winter. What are your thoughts? Well I've got an engineering solution to this but we'll come on to that in due course. Okay good I'm really looking forward to that and yeah go on then.

No but I think I think he's he's basically said his piece. Was that it? Yeah for now. For now yeah I don't want to. Otherwise he's going to get launching into detail isn't he? Yeah. Whereas what we want to

do is find out what life's like. But I'm interested because so much of the sort of Christmas literature and Christmas culture kind of depends on the fact that it's cold and bleak. So what it does if you're in from the UK. Yeah so I'd like I would like to learn how it works in in a

It actually just works the same except we're outside in the sun or camping or at beaches having barbecues playing backyard cricket but we still sing songs like White Christmas all the other classics and we like all out most of our advertising will have Santa dressed up in his like red outfit with snow. Occasionally what they try and do is they try and like modify Santa so he's Hawaiian t-shirts. A couple years ago they did try and write a song where Santa was in summer something about Santa in summer. Not very catchy. Did not really catch on. Okay engineering question

how does Santa's sleigh work when there's no snow? Do they put wheels on? But why does Santa doesn't Santa say fly? Yeah it flies Peter. What are you talking about? It only needs to take off

and land when it's in lap land. Okay where as we all know it snows all the time. Okay but when you were growing up when did you first start to wonder why it was that you know there were all these sort of Christmas songs about snow and the bleak midwinter and cold at the same time as everyone was on the

beach partying? That's a great question and I've never thought about it like it there was never a realization it was just the fact that we always knew like the seasons are different in the northern hemisphere and so it wasn't even a case of like being like we just knew we didn't get a white

Christmas. I think there's an interesting point there which is if you are let's say something like Christmas and what we associate it with is very much dominated by what's going on in northern Europe that maybe if you're in parts of the world that are still anglophone and yet in a different hemisphere in this case you you're more culturally aware and we're not as culturally aware but anyway have you has anyone here apart apart from Sarah spent Christmas in a let's say a tropical

climb or something like that? I had a New Year's in Egypt. Right and did it not feel like New Year's? It felt odd it felt like a it felt like a summer holiday felt like it was warm. Yeah yeah

because what I can say is I've had a few Christmases not many in in the Caribbean I think and it was just great and you know none of this oh it doesn't feel Christmassy no it just it was

a turkey that's the thing you could do a roast on a barbecue very easily but mainly well for me personally we usually start with a brunch and that'll be a boozy brunch. Yeah so so far so far it's ticking your boxes. Yeah yeah yeah see we would start with a boozy brunch. What would the food typically consist of? Usually pastries, bacon, eggs, sausages all like a very good spread and then yeah and then later on in the day then my mum would put on a ham so we'd have a ham and like salads and stuff like that say in the late afternoon and that would be pretty much our food for the day

well we'll be snacking all day anyway. Well look say look. Okay look I but no but I have a supplementary question. Okay go for your supplementary question. Isn't it you know when you've got midsummer which is already really nice and then you have Christmas in the middle of it isn't that like having a birthday and Christmas at the same time what do you do in the middle of the winter? Do you

have any festivals or anything? No but we would throw like midwinter Christmas parties and usually that's a thing like you do with friends or at work and people will come in Christmas jumpers and stuff so we will try and bring it in the middle of the year. Hang on so you effectively

you did you have two Christmases? Quite possibly yes. All right okay okay that's interesting. So there

there seems to be a hankering for the winter Christmas experience. But then again like in

winter like you can only go to certain places to get snow so it's usually miserable cold and raining which is not different from here. But usually it's just a reason to everyone just to get it together

and drink that's it. So look what I want to do is just go back so quite at the beginning of this conversation Nick you were quite adamant that you know Christmas must be in the midwinter so talk me through why that is the case and what are the things that for you go yeah this is

definitely Christmas. Well first of all two questions really. Was Jesus born on Christmas Day? Right good question. Like the songs say. Yeah. Secondly is Christmas somehow inherently a winter festival? Right. Let's take the Jesus question. We're going to start talking about paganism in a minute but anyway go on. Yeah well of course so I mean we all know that Christmas as we know it is a basically a kind of co-opted winter festival co-opted by Christians. But the interesting thing for me was that it turns out that there's no evidence whatsoever that Jesus was born even in this time of year let alone the year we don't even know if it was somewhere between 2 and 7 BC as I understand it. Yeah I've always thought it might be around zero. Yeah it's not wasn't zero. Yeah he was already four years old by the time he was born. Weird. It's a miracle. Apparently some people say that it was spring or autumn based on the analysis of shepherd behavior. Is there anything

related to like the census you know? Yeah I know people think that the most logical time to do

that might for example have been the harvest time or in springtime when people were going back to their farms or something but so yeah apparently there's no evidence that Jesus was born at Christmas time. I think it was really the first apparently it wasn't celebrated until the you know something like 336 AD was the first year that it was celebrated on the 25th of December and so yeah and apparently there's a festival I don't know I've heard of the annunciation but apparently the annunciation was when the angels told Mary that she's gonna have a baby. I should

know this stuff. Yeah well that was on the 25th of March so some people. How do you know that?

By working it nine months before Christmas so the whole thing is made up. Yes I get it right. So that we can dispose of the idea you could move that you could still be consistent with Christian doctrine and move that right you can move Jesus's birthdays wherever you want and it will still be basically kind of as true as 25th of December. Yeah. But winter festivals and I think it's interesting that Sarah said they have had to create one because it's needed because I think there's something very nice about the cycle of the seasons even though everyone hates winter and loves summer and so on. I think it's something really the way that it mirrors the cycle of a life you know of kind of this period of death and then and then birth in spring and sort of aging in autumn. I think it's absolutely brilliant maps on maybe accidentally to lots of other things that we think about in terms of the sort of cycle of birth. But it doesn't. And the

hero's journey in a way. No but it doesn't. Because if no logically if well maybe I think with Easter you know which again was mapped on by the Christians I mean that's about rebirth and so

I guess. Well actually I have some proposals to do with Easter as well but we'll save those but

yeah. But all I would like to say is you know Christmas actually birth in the middle of the

dead winter. Oh no but I know you're talking about Christianity again. I'm talking about a

midwinter festival. Okay so I thought we were talking about Christmas sorry midwinter festival

yeah we are yeah Christmas as the midwinter festival. Well it's it's more like we have

midwinter parties there's no like actual festival. I mean it would be great if there was a festival that would be awesome. But no we have more like midwinter parties. I think I think what we call

a festival is just the name for a regular party from the olden days. You know but the around Christmas used to be Saturnalia and the festival of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti. Oh my favorite Roman. Yeah it is the birthday of the unconquered son. Yeah which is a great name for a year and that was held on as far as we can tell Christmas day. But no Nick so I actually

think you do Christmas really well and I participate in some of that each year. Tell me no talk me through the things that for you personally make Christmas only make sense

if it's midwinter. The things that really only make sense of it being midwinter are the other things to do with like of retrenchment which are like all the things about seeing family and friends which I think you're referring to which I do love and giving presents to each other again and whenever. But there is something that you want to mark that the end of the darkness of the retrenchment beginning of the beginning of the light again. Yeah is something that I think we have a big urge urge to mark. It's important and it corresponds to a real thing unlike almost everything else. Yes actually corresponds to a real measurable thing which is that you know the shortest day and and then you know you mark that and you go great. It's all you know uphill from here on in. And and I think the things that I really like about the Christmas and New Year which are you know being indoors having having a you know eating too much food going for sort of cold walks but then coming back and playing board games and you know that that's those are things that are really wintery and not doing anything for two weeks you know and then at the end of it you feel kind of renewed. Yeah it's got to be winter you can't you can't stay indoors in yeah summer or at least it's a whole different set of things. Yeah well let's be fair on that

last point about not doing much for a couple of weeks you could do that any time of year more or less Nick. I try. But look I want to hear about this engineering solution I'm intrigued. So it

sounds like uh the New Zealanders have already kind of stumbled across it so I was going to suggest two Christmases a year anti-phase with each other so you have a northern hemisphere Christmas in a winter and in in our winter. Did you just say anti-phased? Anti-phase yeah. Okay I've never heard that but I can kind of get what it means keep going. Yeah um uh and uh a southern hemisphere Christmas in their winter yeah so there's a number of advantages so you can you can get all the good Christmassy stuff like the the the Christmas cards with robins on snowy fence posts and all that kind of stuff but also people who really hate Christmas for one reason or another you just need to go on holiday and they can avoid the whole Christmas thing. That's brilliant. All together. Right that's the solution. Yeah and people who love Christmas can go on

holiday and have two Christmases a year. It's really good I've got a different proposal however because I feel like what you're gonna what you're gonna miss there for the sake of the grumpy sods who don't like Christmas yeah is the fact that everyone has Christmas at the same time things like Father Christmas you're gonna make him do twice the work now yeah because he's got to you know and it takes a year to get all the presents ready so well you know but he'll only do the northern hemisphere on their Christmas. It's all you get a sort of southern Father Christmas Mother Christmas or something. Isn't it just like a franchise? Yeah it's just flexi working right it's yeah yeah kind of yeah I like that now my proposal and this is a bit more thematic really yeah is that we get we split the Jesus birth of Jesus thing away from Christmas and we have a winter festival right in Christmas time yes I'm okay I'm down with that we celebrate the birth of Jesus at Easter okay right because that is the time of birth yeah it makes much more sense yeah then and you're going to say well what happens to Easter ah what happens to Easter well Easter gets moved into roughly October where there are no bank holidays okay but and then and then we've ticked off Easter is about death really isn't it yeah so you could say that the Easter is about the about now Easter would make more sense it's about rebirth though yeah you mean the best place the best place to put Easter would be actually at Christmas but then but then I think I don't want Easter interfering with my winter festival so I would put Easter in in the that dark or autumn time when there's no bank holidays probably round about Halloween or something okay that's

that's my simple solution it's just such a good solution I can't think of any objections to it um Sarah would you like to weigh in with anything at this point any thoughts are you up for having

your own Christmas down there not particularly no because you our school's like in summer which is perfect so you get like all your summer break with winter and New Year's you have all your summer festivals it's like the major time of like we have off is it over Christmas and New Year's I wouldn't want to have moved it into winter I prefer the summer don't you get a summer holiday though around around that time yeah we do and we like we usually take that's like when school holiday the school breaks for their major break of the year yeah right whereas so that's convenient for us the school year starts in early February for us ends in early December so it's like actually

within the year there's all these things that line up these guys might have might have might be getting it right you know I was all prepared to say it's totally totally offensive having having Christmas at summertime but no maybe it finishes our year like it properly finishes our year

everyone gets to go do whatever they want in the sun have their have a lot of time off because of all the public holidays because we get Christmas Day Boxing Day New Year's Day and I think the day

after New Year's so we get four days what's your and and you've cobbled together this winter party thing but is there anything at all around there which is a kind of I mean we have the roughly punctuated you know we got Christmas Easter summer that's our and they that kind of usefully splits the year up into three roughly similar sized chunks what's your kind of break point in in what you call what you naively call winter that's a great question how do you know it's do you know what I mean like haven't you got a huge lump between Easter and so it's Christmas

like what's what's there I guess for us a lot of it is based around we have a lot more public holidays throughout the year so we have bigger like we have more chunks so we get Easter we have Queen's Birthday we get Labor Weekends each region has their own their own like public holiday as well so we have multiple throughout the year so you can always you're always having actual breaks and then you usually get school holidays within that and everyone who's working usually will take some time off around there with their kids but yeah I guess it's I'm a bit embarrassed

now to confess that while in in in the far-flung colony of New Zealand they're still merrily celebrating the Queen's Birthday and we don't we don't really do that do we yeah we don't take

the Queen's we should be doing that um I think it was a harsh lesson yeah yeah yeah that's right

Nick you look like you want to say something go on um so you know how uh there are people who want they like summer right they're the people who go off to the beach holidays at Christmas and understand that's all right and then but you might say well okay well if you're so into Christmas why not go and live in uh live in you know Lapland yeah or something well anyway so I what I wanted to know was where would I want to live if if I wanted to find the place where the Christmas was both nice and Christmassy and cold but also special I wouldn't want to live somewhere where it was cold all the time yeah I want to have my cold and I want to have my summer gotcha so I got a list of all the cities in the world I've got some for the I've got one straight

off the bat right go on well something like Chicago or New York that would work um then they are I

can't see Chicago on my list I got the top I was looking for um yeah New York actually is in the top 20 cities for for temperature variation yeah yeah but what I wanted was uh so I ruled out the basis that Christmas probably isn't as big a deal places in the Middle East like uh Tehran and Ashgabat which are actually but the first the so top of the list number three in terms of temperature variation Wichita Kansas right okay that's the place to live if you want to have the the most like you get the you get so the average temperature in summer there is is uh 27 degrees average winter temperature zero degrees that is pretty much spot on for me so yeah I go to for the for the specialist Christmas you can go to the Bradley Fair Christmas tree lighting brilliant the mayor's Christmas tree lighting and lights on that's on the 1st of December or the Marshall family Christmas lights I guess there are a bunch of people who put on a particularly good Christmas lights yeah Wichita Kansas yeah ladies and gentlemen tell us the two in the one

yeah yeah then what's number two what's number one of what of your list because I told you it's

Tehran and Ashgabat oh sorry yeah so and now if you so if you're looking at the the sort of Christendom then the next Yerevan is a good bet actually in Armenia of course that's the first I think the first country to become a Christian country so Yerevan will be a really good choice um uh you know it's got a similar extremes to uh to Wichita um and then below that you're looking at yeah east coast of the US basically Philadelphia um uh Baltimore but not Miami

yeah I wouldn't bother with that um well look yeah well look this ties in nicely with I'd like I'd like to think that you know in the time that I spent with Aleph Insights that there are some pearls of wisdom that have been cast before me that I've managed to sort of pick up and embrace and one of them is that you know you talk about um you know defining your aims right and so if you want before you want to know what you want to achieve we want to know yeah you need to define what your aim is right and so if our aim in this is okay I want to have a a nice Christmassy Christmas I want to have a nice summery summer um then Wichita it is okay however apart from Wichintonians or whatever they're called who the bloody hell wants to live in Wichita okay so that's why you need to that's when you need to think okay well I've got to sort of think about some other stuff here okay um yeah I just want to make that point now look I've got a question I want to ask but before we we go on to that any any any input uh Peter not really no no I think

I think I would struggle separating the Christmas with the cold I think uh it's too ingrained in my mind uh I for me Christmas is aside from family and friends it's about eating and I

you can't I just can't eat when it's hot no true true true true uh Sarah anything to add

I guess the main thing is that we still have everything else so we have we have Santa parades um we have the same Christmas movies we have all the same cultural affiliations with Christmas as people do in the Northern Hemisphere it's really just the only difference is the weather yeah

that's it I can give it another thousand years and it's quite possible that a whole culture will spring up of Christmas being about the hot sun and and lying on the beach yeah yeah yeah

look uh question uh what's your favourite festival that you personally participate in that has got nothing to do with the Christian calendar um Nick well I think my favourite is

bonfire night um and I've become more and more attached to it recently actually um partly as a kind of stubborn reaction against the rise of Halloween as a as the festival which is edging or edging out bonfire night what I love about bonfire night is uh you know it's kind of overtly quite it's historical it's got a good story about it I know it's again actually just quite conveniently tacked on to autumn various autumn festivals about the beginning of winter um but uh yeah I like I like that story I like the idea that actually it's a celebration of kind of you know of of disembowelment terrorism yeah and uh and you know papism uh in in England and I know none of those things are trendy now and in a way that's partly why I like it I like it because it's they wouldn't allow it today yeah um so yeah and I and I wish they'd bring back uh guys yeah

I do like it but I don't like the way it's become such a big thing and I just think it's cultural

import I don't know why I think it's partly a kind of reaction I think I just I just can't because I didn't do it and no one did it when I was a kid yeah I find it somehow completely loathsome because everyone looks to me like an automaton who's been told by by films to go out and do trick-or-treating but uh yeah you know Sarah I'm just going to say that all these holidays and

stuff are a lot more toned down in New Zealand like Halloween is not really a big deal like some kids will go trick-or-treating but we're not we're not really out there much um so we don't actually have bonfire night we do celebrate Guy Fawkes but that basically will be people just going down to the park watching the fireworks go off and then go home whereas I was surprised here at how much of a big deal it was and that there were ticketed events that people would go to in the park that was really surprising um but for us yeah you have an equivalent sort of independence day uh we have Waitangi day so Waitangi day um and this is really going to test my knowledge so you might not want to put this in at all but um Waitangi day would be our national day um and that's at the beginning of February yeah yeah so we have quite a lot of holidays we don't really

have a national day Guy Fawkes is sort of kind of the closest thing you could kind of pin it on no one celebrates St George's day yeah uh Peter um I was going to say Guy Fawkes as well uh but um to vary I'll say the Tour de France that's like a sort of two week long festival about cycling something I care very much about um and if time allowed I would probably take the whole two weeks off and do lots of cycling and then go back and watch the tour in the afternoon um and in France they are a bit nuts for it they the whole uh the the parts of the country more or less shut down

because of this yeah nice do you indulge in the ritual wearing of lycra and uh I routinely wear

like there's nothing ritual about it yeah why deny yourself that pleasure and others the pleasure of that um yeah no for me a slightly cheaty one um carnival which of course is a christian thing um carnival is just a wonderful thing but actually where I live out in the countryside we're quite into our little sort of what do you mean carnival carnival as in carnival as in it's just saying it's like saying party no because carnival is the party you have before lent that's what it is and so it's in the same and so they celebrate it let's say show tuesday right exactly that right got it yeah sorry sorry so sure show tuesday mardi gras in most places known as mardi gras or carnival exactly but anyway no so where I live you know it's quite sort of um sleepy sort of little place and we have all these little different rituals and things so one thing for example in the autumn which is my favorite season we have a communal apple picking at the oldest orchard in in england and that's always a really fun um that's always a really fun affair um and i like that and actually at the same place and around i think it's between i think it's between christmas and new year or just after new year they have this i think it's called west sailing or a west sail night which is of nordic origins and basically you all get together in a field and sing and there's some fire drinks and wine yeah and actually rather exciting last year there was a ukulele band as well which i was had that sounds adorable yeah it's good so it's nice okay all right let's wrap up that thank you very much as always for listening to the cognitive engineering podcast i'm fraser mcgrew we've been here with nick hare Sara Nonu and peter cockill until next

time goodbye no you haven't said happy christmas you'll say happy christmas from on behalf of elephants me and aleph insights leave it finish it until next time goodbye and uh happy christmas