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Christmas in Australia and New Zealand
A summer Christmas, with spiced fruit mince, ham glazed with clove and a pavlova perfumed with vanilla.
Spices for Christmas in Australia and New Zealand
In the southern summer, Christmas is outdoors. The ham is studded with cloves and glazed with mustard, brown sugar and ginger; pudding and fruit mince pies are still made with mixed spice, though often served with ice cream, and pavlova is flavoured with vanilla. Native Australian ingredients such as lemon myrtle, pepperberry and wattleseed appear on some tables, a reminder that Indigenous peoples had spices of their own long before any cargo arrived.
The spices
Also part of it, and being written: Lemon myrtle (A native aromatic leaf.).
Written by the EveryMasala desk with AI assistance. Background: "Christmas in Australia" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Clove: Bayu Nugroho, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Mountain pepper: Melburnian, CC BY 3.0, source