ivy15 Love the Christmas tree!!!

Rough Linen We used to have the full Christmas meal including flaming Christmas pudding with silver tokens and thruppences while I grew up in Oz, even if the weather was in the 90s!

Tile-Stones The colorful Christmas tree is great. Don't know if I could ever get used to celebrating Christmas in summer!

Weatherwell Elite - Aluminum Shutters Thank you Gabrielle!

I am an Aussie living in the US with an Australian company and won't be going home for Christmas. Your post gave me such a smile. That is EXACTLY how we celebrate xmas. I will be making a Christmas Pudding and brandy sauce for my gracious American hosts, but after your post I have been inspired to take them out to the backyard for a bit of after lunch cricket. It's all about the outdoors. Funny thing is, that is exactly what the company I work for is here to embrace.

Merry Christmas!

newmouse Reminds me of Christmas here in South Florida, minus the plum pudding.

olldroo Thank you Gabrielle for summing it all up so well for our American friends. Don't forget while Melbournites head to the MCG on Boxing Day, Sydney siders head for the harbour for the start of the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race.

astraea Sigh .. I wish New Jersey had a warmer winter; I could go for a yacht race about now! (LOL)

aussietoo You're making me so homesick!

Alison Guerriere I love that the outdoor living space looks lived in!

fmshol aaaaaaaaaaah, rain and hot in a day. what a climate. wish i was there....

Fine Art & Portraits by Laurel Thanks for sharing your summery Christmas. Many enviable settings. Lovely.

juliede Beautiful shots! Thank you for lifting my Christmas spirits. As a new Aussie, I miss the colder climates of CA during the holidays. But I'm warming up to my new lifestyle. :-)

kaz2 Juliede you will love the carefree Christmas as you can do so much. I'm in New Zealand and it's similar there. If it is stressful around your home tell everyone to meet at the local park or beach for a BBQ. Take a heap of paper plates and tell or your guests to bring a plate (Food). Grap your togs if it's the beach, the cricket bat, Frisbee etc and have a ball. The good thing you can invite anyone even neighbours that are on their own. At the end of the day throw everything (food, paper plates) all in the bin and then go home to a clean house. This is what we do and I love it. No stress since I work right up to that day with very long hours.
P.S. don't forget the sunscreen.

tindall So the writer is Australian but not one single photo is shot in Australia very disappointing even when there are Australian photos on Houzz. Could you imagine a house and garden magazine in Australia/New Zealand talking about English Christmas and posting photos shot down under? I know the site is free but come on. LAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZY

natashac84 who puts prawns on the bbq anyway? just shell those buggers and eat them up.

the funny thing is at our house we never do any of those things, our tree is green, we have a baked lunch (and we have what my kids call "country breakfast", which has bacon, eggs, hashbrowns and turkey sausages), the kids might play under the sprinkler in the afternoon if its hot, I have never been on a christmas beach holiday, we always go in the last two weeks of the school holidays (end of January), and the only person in our house that watches the cricket on Boxing Day is my husband, as I hate cricket and usually have to work anyway.

Stereotypes really annoy me sometimes.

Joe LaBore Really sad there is not one mention of attending Mass or the birth of Christ which is the entire point of the season. Great eye candy though.

saresym Love the article but oopsy - I'm pretty sure not a single one of those shots is taken in Aus!

olldroo Natasha, I would say generalisation more than stereotype. It certainly does sum up all the Christmasses I have ever known and people I know would agree. It sums up the themes in advertising and in Aussie songs about Christmas, even books I have read. Sure people change things to suit themselves but the basics are always there.

Like you say with the "prawn on the barbie" such a common saying, yet they rarely get there, why stand in the heat and cook them when they are just as yummy shelled.

Yes, Joe, Church, especially on Christmas Eve is a big thing and leaving that out is like taking the 'Christ' out of 'Christmas'

I'm so glad others picked up on the photos, I felt so many details just weren't quite right, especially the beach house, but didn't like to say anything earlier.

And of course the Aerogard is missing too!!!

cdzur Where in Australia is this home?

sgmercer Enjoyed your summary of an Australian Christmas. Sadly, none of your accompanying photos are from Australia rather they are from the USA. Australian design, architecture and products are so unique that one hopes that they read Houzz and will respond with pics of their own.

We have memories of one very hot Christmas day in the Barossa Valley, South Australia. Our Christmas tree that year was a very large dried flower spike from an aloe plant painted silver and another 8 footer was painted white with lots of coloured glass decorations.

Your article brought back thoughts of a wonderful Christmas spent Down Under.

blasz What a shame you didn't use any Australian images to highlight some of our own great architects and designers. Your comments were very true to the way we celebrate but the images were all North American and just don't really give a sense of Australian light, landscape or style.

queencindy I really loved the beach house, so I looked up the Architects, and it's in the US! Very disappointing :-(

We used to have Christmas on the Gold Coast when we were kids, but later, when we had Christmas at home, it was always fresh seafood, because it's just too hot to cook - and nobody ever considered lighting the barbie either! Just heaps of giant prawns, oysters, mud and sand crab - my goodness, I'm salivating just thinking about it!

I used to love going to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, and we were allowed to open one small pressy when we got home, then off to bed.

Here's a photo from the ramp leading down to the beach where I live in Queensland, Australia.

Merry Christmas to everyone who works for Houzz and keeps this site looking so great, and to all of the contributors and readers. xxx

fmshol All of the negative comments make me sad. If you can't say something nice, I'd rather not read it.

marjeanne Had to have a chuckle at this article. I live in Oz and none of the photos here seem to be Australian. We have such amazing beaches and that house on the beach is definitely not one of ours.
Anyways to me Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Jesus as well as spending quality time with family.

We always eat cold meats, laze in the pool and play backyard cricket (the biggest skill is to catch a ball and not spill your beer). The late afternoon is either spent sleeping off the food coma or going to the beach. May I just add, there is nothing worse than a hot meal on a 40degree celcius day so BBQ's are few and far between.
I would love to experience a white Christmas though. Maybe one day.

olldroo Sorry fmshol, normally I would agree with you, but in this case the negativity is in using photos that are not Australian. It is a little hurtful - are our homes not good enough?

donnafrances I agree with those who are disappointed with the country of origin of the photographs. Why even write this article if not using Australian houses? Why has this happened? Is it some sort of copyright issue?

spaseminars Oldroo - I clicked on this article specifically to see Australian homes - I think they are gorgeous, and was very disappointed to see that they weren't featured!

Elements of Style Thanks to all who got a little bit of joy from my article describing some of my personal experiences of an Australian Christmas. Many of the photo's I chose actually reminded me of Australia.
As a contributing writer for Houzz, I am asked to use photo's from the Houzz site, to avoid copyright issues. This benefits all members of the site by sharing everyone's work . What would be terrific is if more Australians joined and then we would have more photo's to choose from.

Merry Christmas and a Peaceful New Year to all.

olldroo And to you too Gabrielle.

Thank you for explaining that, I can understand, still disappointed, but you are forgiven.

Let's see how many photos we can have added after Christmas.

fmshol thank you for explaining; Aussies bagging Aussies. You think I would be used to it by now. Perhaps we should ask why instead of presuming we are smarter that everyone else. A little bit of love hidden in some somewhat nasty comments. This week of all weeks I think we should be kind... I appreciate the trouble you went to to write the article and I for one a proud that you have been chosen (from Australia) to write for this beautiful site.

blasz I would also like to thank Gabrielle for explaining the process.
My comment certainly was not intended to 'bag' the author. Perhaps an explanatory footnote which specified the editorial restrictions would be a way of preventing any disappointment.
Houzz is such an image based site that it is not unreasonable to assume that the pictures accompanying a site/place specific article are authentic to that place.
As others have said the solution would be to get more Australian images up. Otherwise, links to images may be a possibility ?

cuttlefish We have lived in 3 states of Australia over the last 12 years and have had some hot weather at Christmas! However, something didnt seem authenic about the photos.. and on checking they are all US based architects or interior designers. Why not use some of our beautiful houses for the article?

CAROLE MEYER Yes......the Christmas tree is spectacular!

Elements of Style I have updated the idea book with a few Australian photo's. I would love to see some photos of other Australian Christmas traditions and get a better picture of what everyone's Christmas is like.

tindall Since being the first to spot the error I would like to say Congratulations on finally spotting 507 Sydney home improvement pros, the 377 Vic 48 Adelaide , 141 Perth and the 233 Brisbane home improvement pros and the thousands of images of Australia design gardens and pools on Houzz and including on the page.
Fmshol I commend your loyalty to your friend and designer of you house.
This was not about aussies bagging aussies good diversion by the way.
This website gets 300 monthly page views it was the houzz community pointing out lack of professionalism and misrepresentation of images relating to the story.
I have since received an apology from Sheila houzz editor which I wont post as I wont presume I have her permission to do so. However I thank her for her response and honesty.
Happy holidays to all.