“Gravy Day” is an Australian tradition inspired by an improbable Christmas song by Paul Kelly

NEW YORK — For many Australians, Saturday is much more than December 21. It’s “Gravy Day,” all because of the lyrics to one of the most unlikely Christmas songs ever written.

“How to Make Gravy”, written by singer Paul Kelly, has become a party classic in Australia over the past few decades. It was cited this week by the country’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, as he announced his decision to release five drug dealers from prison, and is the subject of a new film which creates a story behind the song.

“It has become our most beloved Christmas song,” Jeff Jenkins of Australian publication The Music wrote this week.

The story takes place in a prison, the lyrics come from a letter that an inmate writes to his brother to give him a recipe for the family’s Christmas dinner. The song is about so much more, as “Joe” expresses regret, longing, fear, paranoia, a bit of humor, and the near-universal vacation emotion of someone wishing they were somewhere else.

The prisoner writes, as the second line of the song says, on December 21, “and now they are ringing the last bells.”

The Inspiration Behind “Gravy Day”

Kelly wrote “How to Make Gravy” in 1996 after being asked to contribute to a holiday album being created for charity. He wanted to record a cover of the band’s “Christmas Must Be Tonight,” but someone else had already requested it. So Kelly tried to put words to a melody he had in mind.

Inspiration came from one of her favorite holiday albums, “A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector,” and Darlene Love’s recording of the classic “White Christmas.” Love features the oft-overlooked first verse from writer Irving Berlin, where the singer talks about being in Los Angeles while wishing he was somewhere snowy and cold.

“There’s a clue,” Kelly said in a TED talk explaining the song’s origins, and there it is.

The story of “Gravy Day”

In the song, “Joe” imagines the family reunion without him. “Who’s going to make the sauce now?” » he said. “I bet it won’t taste the same.” He passes on a recipe, one that Kelly got in real life from a former father-in-law.

The narrator asks his brother to kiss the sleeping children and “give my love to Angus, and to Frank and Dolly.” Tell them all I’m sorry I messed up this time.

He gossips about Mary and her new boyfriend. “Remember the last one?” What was his name again? What was his problem? He never had Nina Simone. In performance, Kelly sometimes replaced Simone with Joey Ramone or “a little too much cologne”.

He asks Dan to look after his wife Rita and imagines the dance after dinner. “Don’t hold her too close, oh brother, please don’t stab me in the back,” he sings, quickly catching himself to note the prison idle time that “transforms the imagination into reality.

The conclusion is a promise: “I will pay them all back.” »

An unusual holiday song with lasting resonance

Kelly’s love of Shakespeare, the bard’s blend of comedy and drama, is also evident in the composition. One of Kelly’s first clues that he had exploited something was a call from his real brother. He was driving and first heard the song on the radio, and had to pull over to the side of the road in tears.

It’s a holiday song without mistletoe or holly. Structurally, there is no catchy chorus, or any chorus at all. Yet as the years went by, his fans requested the song in concert all year round, not just during the holidays. Some of them started marking December 21 by leaving a can of sauce on their porch.

“I can’t predict what songs will become popular or speak to my audience,” Kelly said this fall in an interview with The Associated Press, and “Gravy” is a prime example.

The evocation of family is the most important ingredient of the song. Kelly’s large family gets together every Christmas Eve to sing Christmas carols. Bella O’Grady, a 27-year-old who moved to New York and attended a Kelly concert in New York this fall for a taste of home, said “How to Make Gravy” still evokes the warm feelings of holiday celebrations.

Sometimes very warm. Although many of the song’s emotions are universal, a reference in the lyrics to the expected heat on Christmas Day – “I heard it’s going to be 100 degrees” – clearly sets the setting in Australia. In the Netherlands, vacations take place at the beginning of summer.

Gravy Day in Australia this year

Prime Minister Albanese referred to “Gravy Day” in his decision this week to release five men who were convicted in 2005 of smuggling heroin from Indonesia to Australia.

“Australians talk about what it’s like to have someone who is a loved one – they sing the great Paul Kelly song – in prison at Christmas,” Albanese said, according to The Nightly. “Who’s going to make the sauce?” Well, these families left their loved ones in prison for 20 Christmases, and that was enough.

Using the characters from Kelly’s song and building a story around it, filmmaker Nick Waterman made a film this year called “How to Make Sauce” which is being released on Australian streaming service Binge. It is shown for free in select theaters on “Gravy Day” weekend.

So what’s in this sauce recipe, anyway? “Just add flour, salt, a little red wine and don’t forget a spoonful of tomato sauce for sweetness and that extra tang.”

It’s all in the song.

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