Do Australians celebrate Christmas with snow and sleigh and reindeer images?

I have it on some authority (from at least one American who has been in NZ for Christmas, and from at least one Kiwi), that in general “a fir branch” is hung on a wall to represent “a tree” (who wants to drag a whole tree into the house in the middle of the summer, eh?) and the day is celebrated with cookouts and trips to the beach (or the hills).

Everyone has a Christmas trees over here in NZ, never come across or heard of a fir branch on the wall. Eating a hot Christmas lunch is less and less common, people often preferring a BBQ or cold food and trips to the beach are definitely more common than they used to be when I was a child in the 60s, it was all about the roast turkey and vegetables and gravy with all the trimmings back then, and Christmas pud of course, with sixpences in it, my grandmother was rather a traditional woman.

Santa wears shorts and flip flops, and shows up with a dune buggy.

There is too much of the above- it is not relevant to us at all. Slowly, Australianised Christmas images are starting to infiltrate, and not a moment too soon.
Some Australian Christmas songs include http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlSsffF2xhA
and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0hTHLAe-8E , among others.

@zenvelo – no such thing as flip flops here, we call them thongs.

We used to call them thongs until they started to call underwear with a string up the butt thongs.

I remember the ‘pine branches’ being sold as ‘trees’..in NZ. lol. It was hilarious. But a good tree could be had, if one could be bothered. I laughed when I saw the white fake snow sprayed on the windows, but they also had images of Santa in a bathing suit on a surf board. Fun times.