The Australian Women's Weekly Christmas 2021

always loved the lead-up to I Christmas, in particular putting up our very special tree. Where friends and neighbours had boring green ones with their piney aroma or fluffy plastic branches, ours was a shimmering delight of silver and white. Our decorations were all nutcrackers and snowmen and ice-skating mice in woolly scarves. It was a veritable winter wonderland and it filled me with a certain exotic pride about my English heritage. But memory is a funny thing. Unearthing family photo albums recently, I was faced with the realisation that our tree was not quite the show stopper I remembered. More like a disparate arrangement of metal coat hangers sparsely draped in silver tinsel – tinsel that lost a little more pomp and ceremony each time it was stuffed back…

The decorations have been dusted off; the fresh tree has arrived. The scent of pine competes only with the delicious smells emanating from the kitchen as friends old and new gather together to film the 2021 Christmas with The Australian Women’s Weekly special. Hosting the bash is Sarah Harris, who – having weathered personal loss, the breakdown of her marriage and a bout of homeschooling – is, like many of us right now, ready to reconnect with those she loves and cherish the happy moments that Christmas brings. “This year, more than ever, we need to be around our friends, our family,” she says. “We need to nurture that connection. And we need to really cherish the little moments.” Having lost both her grandmother and close friend Jonathan “Jono” Coleman…

“We need to create more adventures in 2022, that’s the plan.” – Wippa Michael “Wippa” Wipfli with Lisa, Theodore, Jack & Francesca With kids aged six, five and 18 months, Christmas is a time of high excitement in the Wipfli household. Two Elves on Shelves have been out since November 1. “So they can keep an eye on them the entire time,” explains Michael “Wippa” Wipfli. “Because the requests are bigger – iPads and Nintendo Switchs, bubble machines, blow-up toys for the pool. You’re going to need to be really good to get something like that.” Christmas has always been a big part of the NOVA breakfast radio host’s life. Growing up, his family had, “a classic Christmas room. One no one ever used until Christmas”. Wippa recalls racing downstairs…

Danny Abdallah lifts two of his boys up at once, supporting Alex in one arm and Michael in the other, while his almost-teenage daughter Liana lets her mother, Leila, drape an arm around her and leans into her protective embrace. Storms were predicted for the family’s photo shoot and leaves in the garden are glistening from the morning showers. But up above, the dark clouds have broken and sun streams down on the family. “It was the same at the funeral. There were nine days of rain and I remember them saying they never saw rain like this in 30 years, and on the day, the clouds just broke and there was a ray of sun right on the church,” Danny says. The Abdallah family was thrust into the public…

Barbara Tapsell vividly remembers the moment she learned she was about to be a grandmother. She and husband Tony were in the final days of their holiday to Melbourne to see their only child. It was a glorious sunny day and as her daughter emerged from taking a shower, hair freshly washed, she was glowing. “I just looked at her and thought, ‘Miranda looks different for some reason’,” she tells The Weekly. For Miranda Tapsell herself, the discovery would not happen for well over a month later. Having been trying to become pregnant for 18 months, she’d convinced herself that maybe a baby just wasn’t on the cards for her and husband James Colley, 31. “I’d spent so long as a young woman learning about contraception and how not to…

While it’s been a dark year for those of us affected by COVID lockdowns, there has been a shining light – the opportunity to cheer and be cheered by our golden girls of sport. Ash Barty won the world’s most prestigious tennis tournament, Wimbledon; our cricket team beat India in a multi-series; Minjee Lee won her first golf major, and of course our Olympians and Paralympians gave us cause to celebrate day after day. Not since the Melbourne Olympics in 1956 has Australia taken away more gold medals in the pool.“Three seconds ahead of the world! You just don’t see that!” marvelled Ian Thorpe as the 4x100m relay team smashed the 3 minute 30 second barrier for the first time ever. Meanwhile, Ariarne Titmus didn’t just win the 200m and…