Old Time Christmas by Slim Dusty

‘Old Time Christmas’ is a traditional bush ballad chronicling an Australian Christmas from a bygone era. Slim Dusty paints a picture of family traditions - Christmas pudding with silver coins, ginger beer made in a kerosene tin, and the coming together of friends and kin with old-time dancing and an open door for all. The instrumentation is as traditional as any bush get-together with vocal and guitar in the lead and the occasional embellishment of fiddle and jaw harp.

‘Old Time Christmas’ is from the 1980 album The Slim Dusty Family Album, which Slim travelled the country performing with his wife Joy McKean and daughter Anne Kirkpatrick.  The album was produced by Rod Coe who only three years earlier recorded the Saints’ iconic punk offering ‘I’m Stranded’.

Slim’s voice is as familiar as an old friend to so many Australians; he was considered an Australian National Treasure during his lifetime and 70-year career. One of his many accolades was being the first artist broadcast from space when astronauts played his rendition of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ from the Space Shuttle Columbia on its maiden flight as it passed over Australia in 1981.