How are seasonal holidays such as Christmas and Easter perceived and celebrated differently in the Southern Hemisphere?

If you sit down and analyze it then Christmas in Australia is kind of crazy. My family sits around eating a hot roast dinner complete with hot Christmas pudding afterwards. We do this inside surrounded by images of snow, snowmen, sleigh's and all the other traditional Christmas iconography. We do this despite the fact that it can be 40 degrees C outside. It's kind of crazy but we don't mind. We could have a barbecue with some salads and something generally more appropriate to the weather but how is that different to what we'll do on Australia Day a month later? Or New Years day a week later? Or any other day in the summer where the cricket is on and we feel like eating meet and bowls of green stuff prepared by the women folk? We have a strange kind of Christmas and we don't mind because it feels like it connects us with a bigger tradition and makes it special somehow.

Eggs and bunnies are Easter symbols courtesy of them being the tastiest things you could eat during Lent; Lent exists in both hemispheres. Christmas tends to trigger more amusement of course. In OZ, most people have ancestors from the Northern Hemisphere, so there's often an inherited nostalgia for 'the old country' that encourages the use of snow covered images. They are quite appropriate when showing scenes from say the UK (and reading Dicken's 'A Christmas Carol' or watching A Charlie Brown Christmas are fairly common traditions down here). It can get mildly irritating when Nativity scenes etc are covered in snow - the Mediterranean has a climate similar to our own; even if it didn't what sort of twit would be herding sheep in a snow drift at night? If you're getting snow, you should have slaughtered most for food and have your breeding stock under cover. But often it's a case of 'traditions don't have to make sense'.

Australia celebrates Christmas and Easter roughly the same as I guess other western countries would in the northern hemisphere. There has been a bit of a push for Australians to have an Easter Bilby as opposed to an Easter Bunny. It's a many because when choosing between a cute native endangered animal and a feral pest that is causing environmental damage, most people will side with the former. You can now get chocolate bilbies instead of bunnies, etc. and the idea of the Easter Bilby is starting to catch on. However, the Easter Bunny is still surviving and seems to be in it for the long run as a tradition, no matter how much we cynically despise Americanisation. As for Christmas, the difference is that it's hot. It's hovering around 30 degrees at the moment in Tasmania and we're 42 degrees south. Most people will be wearing T-Shirts and shorts on Christmas day, before going outside for some backyard cricket.

Ok a couple of obvious points. Firstly - we don't really associate Easter with Spring renewel or anything like that. Easter is a time of year to mark the death and ressurection of Jesus Christ by eating lots of chocolates and hot cross buns (which are awesome straight from the oven with some melted butter by the way.... and since Easter is in Autumn here it's the perfect time of year for such treats). Christmas isn't in spring - it's in the middle of bloody summer here in Australia. Currently (country NSW) it is 38 degrees outside.  Last night I went and bought one of those inflatable backyard pools for my daughter.  Currently she has been for a swim and is sitting under the aircon watching TV (as am I).  Most people plan their Christmas break around the beach and swimming.  Last week I took a group of kids from my school down to Sydney to check out the new Wet n'Wild Water Theme Park.  It was great.  We also went to the beach.  It was also great. My point is.... these are the things we associate with Christmas here and really we've never known any different.  So we percieve Christmas as being the start of the summer holidays and a great time to read a book and relax on the beach. Personally I think we've got the best possible Christmas. I pity you Northern Hemispherians who shiver and suffer for a few days off and then return to work.