Last year, the Khaieo family was waiting for approval to come to Australia as refugees. Now the Christian Syrian family are spending their first Christmas in Australia. Credit:James Brickwood Yet her 29-year-old brother Akram Khaieo, a former law student and English teacher before the war, says being in "Australia is a dream come true". Nearly two years ago, the extended Syrian Assyrian family fled their Christian village outside the small northern city of Al-Hasakah. Two nearby Christian villages had been kidnapped by ISIS. A cousin and another close relative were murdered. Videos of their execution had been posted on YouTube. By the time the family left, the village was nearly empty: only three people are left there today. Many friends and family members have moved to Australia, while some went north to Norway and other places. On Christmas Day, about 100 family and friends from their village from northern Syria will come together for a picnic and a reunion in a western Sydney park to try to capture some of the joy of the past.

Before the war, the family said Christmas was a time to celebrate and decorate their homes and village. "Christmas in my village was very beautiful before the war," said Mr Khaieo. Papa Noel – a man dressed in full costume with a big beard – would travel on horseback from home to home to deliver gifts from his sack. "Brrrring, brrring, he would ring the door, and do a full tour around the village," Mr Khaieo said. "It was amazing." Mr Khaieo, who was granted refugee status with his parents in June, is now working at Coles in western Sydney. He learned English in school, and by watching American television shows like The Simpsons. Mr Khaieo jokes that the family may have few options if Australia doesn't work out.

What's next? "New Zealand," he says with a laugh. "Mars!" His Assyrian grandparents had been from Turkey, but had emigrated because the government was "killing them". Translating from Assyrian for his sister, his parents Habib and Salma and brother-in-law Rabi Shelimoun, he said some of the family moved to Iraq and others to Iran, where history has repeated since the first massacre against Assyrians in AD339. In about 1933, members of the family relocated to Syria, where they said relationships between Christians and Muslims were happy and peaceful until the war began in 2012. Together the family is among the 8317 Syrians who have arrived in Australia as part of the federal government's pledge in September 2015 to take 12,000 Syrians and Iraqis displaced by conflict. Most Assyrians are Christian, and claimed to be from Mesopotamia. In Syria, there are also non-Assyrian Christians.

When the war started in 2012, the family still gathered for Christmas, but quietly in deference to Christian and Muslim friends. "Because Christmas became very sad, because people in my country were dying and we are sad for them. We still celebrated but with small parties but no decorations. The country changed. In Syria, our friends were Muslim. I used to teach in Muslim schools, and at university my teacher was a Muslim. After the war, some armed group [of extremists] used religion as an excuse," said Mr Khaieo. The last Christmases in Syria were cold. There was no running water, electricity or heating, he says, translating for his parents. "Back in Syria, because all the people are leaving, we feel homesick. And we come here, and everyone is here, and we don't feel too bad any more. If we go back to our country we feel like strangers. No one we used to know is there." The acting head of the Refugee Council of NSW Tim O'Connor said the gift of resettlement was an incredible opportunity for families like Akram's.

"The one-off increase in refugees being able to rebuild their lives in Australia shows that we can comfortably take many more refugees than we currently do," he said. Loading There are now 24 million refugees in the world and last year just 112,000 were permanently resettled – half of 1 per cent. "At Christmas we also remember that there are millions of refugees who will never be resettled and Australia should be supporting those people to live with dignity in the countries they have been forced to flee to, rather than wasting billions locking innocent and vulnerable people up in offshore gulags."