Gravy Day: how Paul Kellys 90s Christmas song is more relevant each year

Is it just me, or does “Gravy Day” become more relevant and get closer and closer to becoming a nationally recognised holiday every year?

Today is December 21, or, as Paul Kelly sang about in How To Make Gravy, the day that some poor prisoner wrote a sad letter about not being able to make the gravy for his family Christmas lunch that year.

I honestly can’t remember the first time I heard of Gravy Day as a concept, but I want to say it started gaining traction in 2018. Why then, specifically? I have no idea, seeing as Kelly released the song in 1996.

Every year since then, on this very day, “Gravy Day”, “Paul Kelly” and “21st of December” all start trending again, with Aussies sharing their solidarity, and some foreigners joining in. Celebrity chefs have even made recipes based on the song lyrics, calling for “flour, salt, a little red wine” along with a “dollop of tomato sauce for sweetness”.

While it’s all in good fun, and a good excuse to listen to a Christmas song that isn’t by Mariah Carey or Michael Bublé, the song that inspired the unofficial holiday actually a pretty sad ditty.

We may never know what the prisoner did to be stuck in jail over the holidays, but the melancholy way he sings about missing his family and reminiscing about fun times passed hits pretty hard — particularly the last couple of years.

With lockdowns, border closures and pandemic anxiety, many Australians spent last Christmas apart from their families. Many face that reality again this year, which all makes the song hit a little too close to home. Even without Covid, the reality is that Christmas can be a really sad time of year for some.

Which is probably why Kelly released a new recording of How To Make Gravy this year, along with a new music video. Very sweetly, the video features families, all living through the realities of lockdown.

The song was on his new Christmas album, Christmas Train, released in November this year.

Others are using the context of a prisoner lamenting being stuck away from his family to point out the actually astounding incarceration stats in Australia, and the fact that the letter-writing prisoner may well not deserve to be in jail.

Like the fact that while Indigenous Australians make up three per cent of the population, they make up a full 29 per cent of the country’s prison population. To over simplify it, that’s messed up.

Of course, others are still just wondering in what world you can write a letter on December 21 and have it arrive by post in time for Christmas. Which honestly might be the greatest mystery in all the lyrics — besides perhaps who was Roger, and why did he get such a bad wrap?

With any luck, by next year, politicians will do the right thing and make Gravy Day a national holiday.

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