“It doesn’t feel like Christmas.”

“They say it might rain on Christmas day.”

In an Elizabeth Bay cafe a couple of retirees chat about the weather while they wait for their coffees. The gloomy days and wet spells risk washing away any Christmas cheer. Where are the long hot summer days, where cicada song fills the air and sweat pastes your paper hat to your forehead?

Diving into the underground car park in Bondi Junction wipers are switched off and the search for a car park is on. Finding a space is harder than picking a present, and you’ll be lucky to squeeze into one without scratching your car. In the Mac Store people look at the latest iPads, hoping if it will fill the hole in their lives that hasn’t been filled by their iPod, iPhone, and iMac.

The wet weather hasn’t stopped the fun at office Christmas parties. Sydney Harbour is busy with boats hired out for cruises. Pubs along the water’s edge are packed. Office workers dress up as gangsters and molls, devils and angels, cowboys and indians. For the few hours before the bar tab runs out they can forget that they hate their boss, colleagues, or job.

The buses are crowded but the passengers are in good spirits: holidays are just around the corner. People waiting at bus shelters, watching overloaded buses speed past their stop, don’t seem so happy.

The driver on the 443 has dressed as Santa and tarted up his bus with tinsel. He waves out the window as he drives the route to Pyrmont and drops passengers off at The Star where they can put money for Christmas presents through the pokies.

There are no holidays for the old man who works for change at the traffic light outside the Empire Hotel in Annandale. He is wearing a Santa hat and jacket and has a straggly white goatie: Santa hit by hard times. He weaves through the waiting traffic armed with window cleaner and squeegee, prepared to polish the windscreen of anyone who doesn’t wave him away quickly enough.

In Ermington a couple of Vinnies volunteers knock on the doors of gloomy housing department flats. Small windows don’t let in much sunlight. Lights are switched off to save electricity. Pensioners have sideboards filled with cheap knick-knacks. A teenage mother has a unit as bare and neat as a prison cell.

The volunteers hand over clothes baskets filled with food. If there’s a kid in the house there are soft toys or games. The recipients are grateful. It’s not much, but it’s something extra to go in the pantry or under the tree. It is Christmas after all.