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 that's not true. Now Sarah has recently joined Aleph Insights and excitingly is from New Zealand and it turns out that it's Christmas there but also summer. 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've 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 he's basically said his piece. Was that it? Yeah for now. For now yeah. 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 would like to

learn how it works in a southern hemisphere. 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 like modify Santa so he's in like board shorts, 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?

Does he put wheels on? But where does Santa, doesn't Santa say fly? Yeah it flies Peter.

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 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. Well 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're more culturally aware and we're not as culturally aware. But anyway has anyone here 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 summer holiday. It felt like it was warm. Yeah because what I

can say is I've had a few Christmases, not many, 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 just lovely.

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 Nick. Yeah yeah see we would start with a boozy brunch. What would the food typically? Um 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 um 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 um 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 is 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 yeah yeah but usually it's just a reason to

everyone just to get it together and drink that's it. So look um what I want to do is just go back so quite at the beginning of this conversation Nick you were quite um 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. Yeah well uh two two 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. 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 um 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 certainly somewhere between 2 and 7 BC as I understand it. Yeah I've always thought it might be around zero but yeah yeah it's not wasn't zero yeah yeah he was already four years old by the time he was born weird um apparently some some some people say that it was spring or autumn based on the analysis of shepherd behavior. Is there anything related to like the 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 or in springtime when people were going back to their farms or something but um so yeah apparently uh there's no evidence that Jesus was born at Christmas time um I think it was really the first apparently it wasn't celebrated until the you know something like 336 AD was the first year uh that it was celebrated on the 25th of December and um so yeah and 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 go on. Well that was on the 25th of March so some people had how do you what how do you know that by by working nine months before Christmas so the whole thing is made up yes I get it right so yeah so 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 as true as 25th of December yeah but winter festivals and I think it's interesting that Sarah said they they have had to create one because it's needed because I I think there's something very nice about the cycle of the seasons even though everyone hates winter and loves summer and so on uh 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 um I think it's absolutely brilliant maps on maybe accidentally to lots of other things that we think about in terms of the the sort of cycle of earth but it doesn't and the heroes the heroes

journey 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 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 sorry

I thought we were talking about Christmas sorry midwinter festival yeah we are yeah Christmas

has 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 a festival is just the name for a regular party from the olden days you know but the the the around Christmas used to be Saturnalia and the festival of DS Natalis Solis Invicti uh my favorite Roman yeah it is the the birthday of the unconquered sun yeah which is a great name for a 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 um tell me no talk me through the things that for you personally make

uh Christmas only make sense if it's midwinter the 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 the the the end of the darkness of the beginning of the beginning of the 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 the 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 um and and I think the things that I really like about the Christmas and New Year which are um 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 yeah summer 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 um 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 antiphase with each other so you have a northern hemisphere Christmas in a winter and uh in in our winter did you just say antiphased antiphase 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 yeah 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 oh but it's all you get a sort of southern Father Christmas Mother Christmas or something yeah it's just flexi working right it's yeah yeah kind of yeah I like that no my proposal and this is a bit more thematic really yeah is that we get we split the 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 because that is the time of birth yeah it makes much more sense yeah then and you're gonna 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 could say 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 you want for having your own Christmas down there not particularly

no because you ours feels 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 makes sense yeah 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 uh 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 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 um what's your kind of break point in in what you call what you winter that's a great question um how do you know it's 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 can they they're the people who go off to the to 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 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 on the basis that Christmas probably isn't as big a deal places in the Middle East like uh Tehran and Azkabat which are actually but the first 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 Wichita 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 light yeah 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 Azkabat 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 you know it's got a similar extremes to Wichita and then below that you're looking at yeah east coast of the US basically Philadelphia Baltimore but not Miami yeah I wouldn't bother

with that 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 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 nice Christmassy Christmas I want to have a nice summery summer 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 this when you need to think okay well I've got to sort of think about some other stuff here okay yeah I just want to make that point now look I've got a question I want to ask but before we go on to

that any input Peter? Not really no no I think I would struggle separating the Christmas with the cold I think it's too ingrained in my mind for me Christmas is aside from family and friends it's about eating and I just can't eat when it's hot no true true true true Sarah

anything to add? I guess the main thing is that we still have everything else so we have we have Santa parades 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 lying on the beach yeah yeah

yeah look a question what's your favourite festival that you personally participate in that has got nothing to do with the Christian calendar? Nick? Well I think my favourite is

bonfire night and I've become more and more attached to it recently actually partly as a kind of stubborn reaction against the rise of Halloween as a as the festival which is edging edging out bonfire night what I love about bonfire night is 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 but I like that story I like the idea that actually it's a celebration of kind of you know of of counter-terrorism yeah and you know papism 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 so yeah and I wish they'd bring back guys yeah yeah you know burning people in effigy what's wrong with that why is that yeah exactly what could possibly be

wrong yeah yeah because actually can conversely you know sorry to interrupt but Halloween I actually don't like Halloween that much I mean 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 I don't know why I think it's partly a kind of reaction I think I just I just can't there's something 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 yeah you

know Sarah I'm just gonna 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 so we don't actually have bonfire night we do celebrate Guy Fawkes but that basically will people 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 but for us yeah you have a equivalent sort of independence day we have Waitangi day so Waitangi day and this is really going to test my knowledge so you might not want to put this in at all but Waitangi day would be our national day 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 and Guy Fawkes is sort of kind of the closest thing you could kind of pin it on yeah no one celebrates St George's day Peter? I was going to say Guy Fawkes as well but 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 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 and in France they are a bit nuts for it they the whole the parts of the country more or less shut down when the tour was on because of this yeah nice

do you indulge in the ritual wearing of lycra and I routinely wear lycra there's nothing ritual

about it yeah why deny yourself that pleasure and others the pleasure of that yeah no for me a carnival which of course is a Christian thing 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 Tuesday right exactly that right got it so sorry so sure sure 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 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 that's always a really fun affair 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 excitingly 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 there thank you very much as always for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast, I'm Fraser McGruer, we've been here with Nick Hare, Sara Nonu and Peter Coghill

until next time goodbye no you haven't said happy Christmas you'll say happy Christmas from on behalf of Aleph Insights, me and Aleph Insights, bah humbug, leave it finish it in there

until next time goodbye and happy Christmas