Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Keywords: Christmas Story

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A very varied Christmas

    • Barry Gittins
    • 17 December 2020
    5 Comments

    What does Christmas mean for you? What does it have in store? Preceding and in the midst of the annual celebration of life and hope that is Christmas, we will always have those, as H L Mencken noted, are obsessed with the ‘haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy’.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Language as an open door

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 December 2020
    13 Comments

    If we want to renew religious language and images we must begin with attention to the words we currently use, noticing their resonance as well as their meaning. It is then important for the language of prayer and reflection to be grounded in deep contemporary experience.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The way we were at Christmas

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 08 December 2020
    18 Comments

    When I was small we spent Christmas camping by a river in NE Victoria. The festivities began on Christmas Eve, when campers and residents of the township of Bright gathered for carols by candlelight. During the singing of my favourite ‘Good King Wenceslas,’ I never wondered about the absence of snow ‘deep and crisp and even.’ I don’t imagine anyone else did, either

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Let them pick fruit

    • Vivienne Cowburn
    • 13 October 2020
    19 Comments

    An idea that’s gaining traction, in a pandemic where international travel has stopped and many Australians are losing their jobs, is this notion that the unemployed (aka: everyone on JobSeeker payments) should go out into the regions and help the farmers pick fruit.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Our neighbour Sam

    • Brian Matthews
    • 04 August 2020
    19 Comments

    Our neighbor Sam is in his mid-seventies. He takes things quietly, enjoys a chat where our two gardens converge at a corner of the lambing paddock that unfolds beyond our shared wire fence and, regularly in summer, Sam is partial to a few cooling drinks.

    READ MORE
  • MEDIA

    Editors' Picks: Best of the Decade

    • The Editors
    • 20 December 2019
    6 Comments

    Our team of editors have dug through the past ten years' worth of Eureka Street articles to nominate their favourite pieces published between the start of 2010 and today. Check out our list and then jump into the comments to tell us what are your picks of the decade and why.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Christmas in a time of fire

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 17 December 2019
    15 Comments

    This year the contrast between the original story of Christmas and its Australian circumstances has cut even deeper. Bushfires have taken lives, destroyed properties and spread smoke and ash over cities. If the theme of the first Christmas was one of hope and joy, behind the bushfires this year lurks anxiety about the future of the world.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    It's Christmas and I'll dance if I want to

    • Barry Gittins
    • 16 December 2019
    5 Comments

    Dance and music are as innate as breathing. Babies dance while in the womb, and the Yuletide can be prime time for 'playing music, singing and dancing [as a] healthy outlet for their emotions'. As William Stafford observed, kids dance 'before they learn there is anything that isn't music'.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dickens and Christmas as we grow older

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 13 December 2019
    5 Comments

    Dickens was a prolific writer, and one of patchy quality: the threat of sentimentality was never far away, so that this brief work is not one of his best. But in this consumer age it is salutary to have his definition of the Christmas spirit, which is one 'of active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness and forbearance'.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australian unis failing Hong Kong students

    • Sangeetha Thanapal
    • 14 September 2019
    5 Comments

    The students might not have many rights back home, but they do in the western democracies in which they live. The violence against peaceful protestors not just in Hong Kong but in countries where Hong Kong students are exercising their basic rights is unsettling. Yet the response by unis all over Australia has been taciturn at best.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    The secretive business of detention dirty work

    • Meg Mundell
    • 21 August 2019
    8 Comments

    If you're not burdened by a conscience, it's a perfect get-rich-quick scheme: offer 'garrison' services to governments reluctant to get their hands dirty. Ensure the vulnerable people you 'manage' are hidden, demonised by politicians and right-wing commentators. Hire cheap labour, minimise your tax, and make millions.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Aboriginal women face triple jeopardy

    • Katelyn Jones
    • 19 July 2019
    6 Comments

    Intersectionality describes the experience of overlapping oppression faced by black women. Criminologist Chris Cuneen discusses the double jeopardy faced by Indigenous women in Australia who live under both colonialism and the patriarchy. Throw in capitalism and you get a sometimes-lethal triple threat.

    READ MORE