Stratford Christmas midwinter festival

"Save the date 
On July 5th Stratford Christmas will be hosting Stratfords first ever community wide midwinter Christmas festival
Details to come, Planning is underway..."
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Memories from my childhood

I'm sure Christmastime used to be much more of a big deal than it is now. Oh I know we're bombarded with advertising but that's not what I mean. Christmas is not the same as I remember as a kid. That's what prompted me to write my Christmas song 'Antipodean Christmas (Christmas Past)'.
    For a start, most towns decorated their main streets. Nowadays it seems to be too expensive or prone to vandalism. I recall the three huge candles erected every year in Lower Hutt City. My parents weren't particularly Christmas-lovers but I do remember one year being taken into Wellington City to see a Christmas miniature train set-up in a shop window.
    I remember too the Salvation Army brass bands, playing Christmas music on the street. Sometimes there would be choirs in the malls and such-like, singing carols. Don't see them these days. Somehow the tinny, generic music played over loud-speakers is not the same.
    We kids would make count-down calendars, marking off each day till Christmas Day. Much excitement! At school and at Brownies, we would sing Christmas carols.
    Our traditions basically being British, our mother slaved all day to cook a roast dinner in high summer. Our grandparents were sometimes present and our kitchen table would be taken into the sitting room so we could all fit around it.  After the roast lamb, roast potatoes, carrots, peas and mint sauce, there would be fruit salad, ice-cream and my grandmother's Christmas pudding in which she'd put sixpences; much careful chewing!.
    The festive music on the radio was all about "white Christmas" and "chestnuts roasting on an open fire". The cards we gave and received were of winter scenes with snowmen, red-breasted Robins and snow.
    It amazes me in the Hallmark Christmas movies how every American town looks like a Christmas card; they go all out with their decorations. Whether it's really like that in America I don't know, but I wish it was like that here. I've never in my life experienced a white Christmas but it is on my wish-list to do so.

Christmas light finder

New Zealand Christmas Light Finder (Auckland) -- Facebook
"...Let us know where great light displays are or community Christmas events. Even post a pic :) share the magic of the season with others around Auckland..."