New Year + Xmas Kiwi Style

500km of cycling in 7 days is mainly what I got up to

I did the Festive 500 on strava, great way to spend christmass, especially over here. Up early every day, less drinking and generally finished by lunch so can still spend the days with everyone.

Went to Napier for a couple of days as well which was a nice change. Nice place, the CC is a bit industrial and the beach can be dangerous with the tides but some fantastic cycling, lots of good wineries and good food. Its a very pro cycling city with lots of routes and paths developed, strange to see so many people cycling over here

irish xmas is just 3 months of commercialism with the day itself being a massive anti climax
at least here its all about enjoying the weather and family - out on the beach or relaxing in the garden or what have you. It's nowhere near as commercial and that makes it so so much better

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

Christmas is **** here, all the stuff listed above is summer holidays stuff, Christmas Day just came in the middle of it. Irish Christmas is what Christmas is all about,

ahh, I'm thinking that's northern hemisphere Christmas you're missing, not specifically Irish.

Anyways ... just have a mid-winter Christmas in July/Augustish ... just like Kiwis in Ireland do (http://www.newzealand.ie/index.php?option=com_acymailing&ctrl=archive&task=view&listid=1-mailinglist&mailid=26-2013-summer-bbq&Itemid=53)

Weatherwise, with the exception of a few really nice days I found the last couple of weeks very homely.

I had a good christmas. I actually preferred it to a christmas back home. I'm normally not a fan of it due to the pressure dumped on you for what ends up to being a boring anti-climax of a day.

BlackEdelweiss wrote: »

Had a kiwi couple up for new years eve. They were planning to be home by 10.30 but we kept them out till after 3 am and showed them how to do it irish style.

Christmas is **** here, all the stuff listed above is summer holidays stuff, Christmas Day just came in the middle of it. Irish Christmas is what Christmas is all about, you have your specific holidays for it, you have the run up to it, the actual day and then the come down from it with the build up to New years eve thrown in. Here it is just a day in the middle of your summer holidays, my wife works in the Council and had to work till 5pm on Christmas eve. She couldn't even get around the shops as they all closed as normal at 5pm. No effort was made to make things feel like Christmas, people would hardly even reply when you said happy Christmas and none offered the salutation first.
A kiwi in my wife's work went to England with her English husband last Christmas and she came back and said that actually felt like Christmas.
Christmas here is just a day in the summer, what a waste of the best holiday in the year. Another point for Ireland!

Hahaha! I have read this post in the midst of a truly awful, miserable homesick moment, so despite that it is April I feel compelled to respond in defence of Christmas how it should be!

Weather: A white Xmas is a nice novelty for a Southern Hempisphere native sure, but how often does that happen? Usual Xmas here is grey sky, grey wet buildings and roads, dead looking gardens, mud, rain, people scurrying about in dark heavy clothing looking cold and wet.

Food: Come on now you cannot say Xmas food is better here! Turkey, ham, brussel sprouts and mash? No thanks I'll have something similar to that for a normal dinner often enough. And what is with jelly and tinned pears in trifle? Yuk! Trifle is supposed to be filled with loads of fresh berries between layers of cream, custard and sherry sponge.

Activities: Sitting inside watching ****e on TV, or at best playing board games. Compared to beaches/rivers/swimming pools/BBQ's/Camping. If Santa brings a bike or a trampoline, it is nice to be able to actually use it. I feel sorry for kids over here who have winter birthdays too.

Holidays: Two weeks not enough over Christmas. As a kid there was a build up and excitement to the school holidays and Xmas combined and then once Xmas is over its family summer camping holidays and the whole of January off. Although I do acknowledge that nobody in their right mind would want the revolting month of January off here to sit around inside doing nothing and feeling more miserable than the normal dose of January misery. The month that was my favourite all my life has turned into the one I most despise.

New Year: Bonfires/Camping/Heading out wearing summer clothes and drinking in outdoor bars. Having to put 50 layers over party clothes and heading out to a stuffy, stinking indoor pub compares very poorly. So does having your hair destroyed by the inevitable rain/damp/drizzle by the time you get to said stuffy pub.

It amazes me that many people who have tried both think Xmas is better in the Northern Hemisphere. I hate it.

Kiwi in IE wrote: »

Hahaha! I have read this post in the midst of a truly awful, miserable homesick moment, so despite that it is April I feel compelled to respond in defence of Christmas how it should be!

Weather: A white Xmas is a nice novelty for a Southern Hempisphere native sure, but how often does that happen? Usual Xmas here is grey sky, grey wet buildings and roads, dead looking gardens, mud, rain, people scurrying about in dark heavy clothing looking cold and wet.

Food: Come on now you cannot say Xmas food is better here! Turkey, ham, brussel sprouts and mash? No thanks I'll have something similar to that for a normal dinner often enough. And what is with jelly and tinned pears in trifle? Yuk! Trifle is supposed to be filled with loads of fresh berries between layers of cream, custard and sherry sponge.

Activities: Sitting inside watching ****e on TV, or at best playing board games. Compared to beaches/rivers/swimming pools/BBQ's/Camping. If Santa brings a bike or a trampoline, it is nice to be able to actually use it. I feel sorry for kids over here who have winter birthdays too.

Holidays: Two weeks not enough over Christmas. As a kid there was a build up and excitement to the school holidays and Xmas combined and then once Xmas is over its family summer camping holidays and the whole of January off. Although I do acknowledge that nobody in their right mind would want the revolting month of January off here to sit around inside doing nothing and feeling more miserable than the normal dose of January misery. The month that was my favourite all my life has turned into the one I most despise.

New Year: Bonfires/Camping/Heading out wearing summer clothes and drinking in outdoor bars. Having to put 50 layers over party clothes and heading out to a stuffy, stinking indoor pub compares very poorly. So does having your hair destroyed by the inevitable rain/damp/drizzle by the time you get to said stuffy pub.

It amazes me that many people who have tried both think Xmas is better in the Northern Hemisphere. I hate it.

Stop, you are making me even more homesick now!

I'd even be prepared to go straight into an NZ winter after having just endured January, February and March here!

Perhaps we need a homesickness thread in this forum where Irish in NZ and Kiwis in IE can rant, drivel and moan about things they miss from home and culture shock without anyone taking offence!

I agree with the above post that Kiwi's are not necessarily less materialistic. I think we are materialistic about different things. Here a lot of people seem to want to be 'seen' to have things. An example of this is the car number plates with registration date on them. What purpose does this serve other than so people will know when you are driving a new car. Also someone else said about clothing and electronics. To me the 'latest' (within six months of release) phones, tablets, big tv's are totally unnecessary and clothes with big, screaming designer names are at best tacky. However people here who are obsessed with the huge smart tv, the 14 number plate and having everyone know in no uncertain terms that their shirt was made by someone employed by Ted Baker's company, can hardly fit the TV in their tiny lounge that is attached to their neighbours lounge. I don't get this. Hardly anywhere, if anywhere at all in NZ, do you find 'estates' where hundreds of horrible houses are all horribly identical, tiny and joined to at least one other house with a backyard the size of a small room. Either that or appallingly ugly bungalows that for some reason people seem to like painting in yellow, peach and pink hues. Feck Ted Baker, up to the minute electronics and 14 number plates, I would rather be dressed in rags and use a push bike for transport so long as I could live in a proper house. I think there must only be about 3 architects in Ireland because almost every house is set out the same inside and outside with about 3 variations. Very posh areas, period houses and rural areas are an exception, but otherwise the average, standard type of housing that ordinary people live in in the towns and cities are absolutely hideous by NZ standards.

I get that you are venting a small but don’t take it out on lovely Ireland!!
Yes, Ireland does like a little bit of keeping up with the Jones and their rich antics but a lot of this was due to huge amount of money being delivered to everybody in a small time. We were a poorish country and BOOM, the boom happened and people went a little nuts. Any country would do the same! We are getting better.
Materialism in NZ tends to be needs driven. I need a ute to tow the boat and carry the fish I catch from the boat
The food you talk about (Bacon and cabbage and stews and that) come from this poorer times where cheap hearty filling food was all people could afford. You mention you have nice food and you do but the variety is no more than Ireland. Yes you have more fish and kumera (which I love by the way) but what else have you that you can claim is Kiwi? Pavlova? Lamb(Exported!!) and Wine of course Some good Asian food here to!
We have Irish dishes loved around the world. If you don’t like, don’t eat???? And yes, 1 pm lunch time….I hate 12 pm lunches…cant do it!
With regards the houses. New Zealand is so much bigger than Ireland (ill never complain about the 3 hour Dublin to Galway drive again), allowing the space to build those detached house, which are great in design and space. New Zealand has developed with all this space and that carried over to the way houses are now designed. This is biting you now a little as more and more people are coming here for the exact reason of space. The result is and ever growing city rivaling London in size and lacking an infrastructure to support it and a population density that justifies building it!! Hence the ever growing number of cars on the northern into the city everyday with one person in them.
I guess Ireland developed slightly different with the big estates with little imagination.