The Secret Santa
If you were down on Bondi Beach this Christmas - either dressed as Santa or feeling much more “at home” as a result of seeing a Santa - you may be interested to learn the origins of this annual event. Well you can trace this proud tradition all the way back to 1999 - my sophomore year as a backpacker.
I’d already spent Christmas ‘98 on a beach in Koh Samui wearing nothing more than a pair of beaten undercrackers. In those days, of course, I was rebelling against soap and a daily dip in the warm waters of the gulf of Thailand both refreshed my skin and breathed new life into those tattered boxers. I’d arrived in Thailand after more than four years of planning, having commenced my research while still in school. It was a little known about destination in those days, of course, and hardly anyone visited.
I was shocked when I arrived, however, to find the streets of Bangkok teeming with travellers. Likewise, Koh Samui. I soon learned the reason for this was the publication three years earlier of The Beach - Alex Garland’s insufferable novel about backpackers on a secret beach in, you guessed it, Thailand. As I’ve already made clear, I arrived there having planned the trip four years before; I was totally unaware of the novel’s existence.*^ In fact, even today I’ve never made it past chapter two. Even so, it had apparently become a word-of-mouth hit and attracted many British backpackers to Thailand thinking they were as adventurous and as unhinged as the protagonist Richard (if Richard is indeed the main character’s name? Readers?).
The Beach: based on the research notes of a 13 year old.
Well, while seemingly everyone else hid their insecurities about being so far away from home behind a love of smoking marijuana and Singha beer, I saw through them. They were only getting high/drunk because they felt alienated and alone.
Lying on that idyllic beach it dawned on me: this would be much more fun (for them) if I was dressed as Father Christmas. Alas, that year it was not to be. The paucity of Christmas-themed shops was evident throughout Thailand in those days, let alone Koh Samui.
My first great act as a backpacker, then, was to hold on to the idea for next year, when I was to create the now popular tradition of dressing as Santa Clause and getting battered on Bondi Beach.
Fast forward to 1999. I had a full 12 months of backpacking experience behind me. I’d done Thailand. Now I was in Australia. Here the festive season crept upon us residents of Surf’s Up backpackers. We were like the backpacking United Nations - a real melting pot of cultures: English, Irish, Scotch. There were even a couple of Dutch ladies. But despite our differences we all had one thing in common: we were all Europeans.*
Sand-ta Clause: just like Tim Berners-Lee I created something for the people, free of charge.
Spending the festive season away from home can prove daunting for many young backpackers and their were many dour faces** around the hostel. While the Australian summer is fun, Christmas is a winter festival and just doesn’t feel right in the heat. Tinsel should leave one feeling an inner warmth; not blind you as it splinters the summer sun’s blistering rays in all directions.
Already the most resilient backpacker on the east coast at that time, I hit on the novel idea of embracing Christmas in the southern hemisphere, rather than resenting it. It may not feel like the festive season, but if we all squinted the sand did look a bit like snow.
And so I suggested having a BBQ/picnic on Bondi Beach in broad daylight on Christmas Day.
To cheer everyone around me up - and because the three Glaswegians were really bring everyone else down*** - I came up with a radical idea to dress as Santa Clause. Well, this hadn’t been done before. At least not to my knowledge. And certainly not on Bondi Beach.
So we gathered the hostel’s inhabitants together - the Irish, the Scotch and the two Dutch girls, took a few cool boxes down to the beach and settled in for the day. Around about 1pm I slipped away back to the hostel and changed in to the Santa outfit I’d bought from a cheap and nasty dollar store in the Junkyard. (This was 1999, remember, and pre- Westfield). It was 100% polyester and breathtakingly hot. In fact, I sweated approximately half my body weight within the first three hours of wearing it.
It was worth it though. As I strode over the baking hot sand with a bulging black sack^ slung over my shoulder, I must have appeared to these glum backpackers like a festive Omar Sharif shimmering across the Bondi sands.
How their faces lit up! In fact, it seemed to cheer the whole beach up, for when I next looked around I noticed the beach was full of others dressed as Santa. How they managed to all find a store open on Christmas Day is further testament to the my burgeoning influence and power as respected backpacker.
* This was approximately 5 years before the Brazilians “swamped the pavilion”, arriving in Bondi in droves, and bringing with them their culture of talking loudly on their mobile phones while on the 380 bus, and a love of tattoos.
** 3 Glaswegians occupied an entire dorm room to themselves.
*** If memory serves correctly they’d become overly concerned with the looming Millenium bug and how it may affect their Hotmail accounts and CD walkman - one of them actually said “I canny go to sleep withoot mae Del Amitri greatest hits.”
^ it was a bin liner actually.
A Token Gift: By collecting tokens from the back of Weetabix boxes I was able to save up enough earn this amazing geographical document. Not only did it inspire me to travel, it - and the notes I kept within - would also inspire one of the biggest paperback hits of 1996.
*^ Incidentally, Garland’s Wikipedia page states he graduated from the University of Manchester in 1992. Around this time I went on a weekend trip to visit family in Moss Side and left the crumpled research of my future Thai trip, wedged inside my treasured Weetabix Wonderworld Atlas (the 1988 edition), in a McDonald’s. It’s hardly a stretch of the imagination to assume a cash-strapped Garland stumbling into that very same restaurant after we’d left and flicking wide-eyed through the pages. A bestseller was born!