Airdate: That Christmas

Next week ABC screens a local special, That Christmas, a collection of funny and powerful stories about “a Christmas like no other”, told by the people who lived through them.

Some of the storytellers are familiar faces, some are new.

They include:

• A first date on Christmas Day turns serious when a child goes missing.
• Richard Glover’s dog examines the evidence behind the Great Christmas Ham Incident.
• Benjamin and Michelle Law share their culture clash of giving and receiving Christmas gifts within their Chinese Australian family.
• As a Jewish child in Scotland, Dr. Norman Swan kept a secret.
• Indigenous artist, Blak Douglas, tells the story of never really understanding Australian Christmas until a chance encounter with a White Kangaroo.
• Best-selling author Di Morrissey toasts a Christmas in South America that she and her children will never forget.
• Pearl was a 7-year-old when cyclone Tracy came to Darwin on Christmas Eve 1974.
• Aminata was a newly arrived refugee when she was welcomed into a family of former refugees to share their Jewish / Christian / Australian Christmas
• Nicole Lee and her children remember their first Christmas of freedom.
• Paul Van Reyk tells the story of his Sri Lankan family as he bakes his beloved grandmother’s Christmas cake.
• The Royal Melbourne Hospital Scrub choir re-write and perform a Christmas classic.

Production credits: Producers: Tracey Spring, Amber Ma, Deborah Boerne, Kim Akhurst, Noel Debien, Mark Webb; Researchers: Wendy Boynton, Michele Esteves; Editors: Danielle Akayan, Philippa Byers, Shahane Bekarian; Executive Producer: Jessica Douglas-Henry.

8:30pm Tuesday December 8 on ABC.