Mrs Speech tells me, that growing up in America, it was their tradition to bake Christmas cookies in the lead up to the Big Day.

For the record, we call them biscuits. Over here biscuits are cookies. You don't soak them in gravy and if you put them with your roast beef it'd be a strange combination. Biscuits are cookies and cookies...are smaller, round things with little chips in 'em I guess.

But, Christmas cookies are what Mrs Speech likes. She usually makes them sugar-cookie-style (like Gangnam Style, only better) but this year she decided to chocolate them up and whack on some leftover chocolate icing mix.

We never did anything like this when I was growing up. We never really had those kinds of traditions. Our tradition, growing up in Adelaide, was to get out of the 40°/110° heat. Later, when I was comin' up in Brisbane, the tradition was to get out of the 33°/100° heat and melt-you-where-you-stand humidity.

Christmas traditions in Australia are slowly disappearing, you know, like how you read twice a year on CNN that unless someone does something, fourteen languages will disappear in the next year? It's like that. I was walking back home through our unit complex the other day and I saw a wreath. A really nice wreath, too. But then I thought, I don't think there's another one in the walk down to our place. We have one up.

You'd pass sixteen units and not see another one. There was a time when you'd see tons of them. And lots of Christmas tree lights in windows.

Man this is turning into a depressing post. I don't wanna do that to you.

We LOVE Christmas in our household. So we do traditions. We're going through them in this How We Do Christmas series, but so far this is what we've traditioned for the holiday season:

• Putting up the tree (everyone does this...)
• Christmas present shopping (everyone does this, too, mainly)
• Going to the lighting of the tree (not sure for how much longer)
• Buying a bauble for our tree that same night
• Going to the Twilight Markets/Christmas Parade (just started)
• Watching It's a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve ("Merry Christmas y'old Building 'n Loan")
• Reading the Christmas Story from Luke 2:1 to Luke 2:20 (we do this before opening presents)
• Watching Ben Hur Christmas Day (after lunch...when I fall asleep fifteen minutes in...it's the best Christmas movie ever, though)

Traditions are important, in my humble opinion. They bind us to our past and guarantee that we don't forget what is important. And in our five minute culture I want to be bound to the notion that Christmas is not transient, is not of diminishing importance.

That it's a day that has been honoured by billions of people who've come and gone under the reign of the king, for two thousand and twelve years (and counting...regardless of what the Mayans say).

So we hold on to our little quaint practices, of wreaths and Christmas movies, because we love the season, we love the Saviour, and we love our Christmas cookies.