Most Christmas songs are fairly cheery, about festive topics such as reindeer, Santa Claus or kissing under the mistletoe.
Australian singer Paul Kelly’s hit How to Make Gravy is an outlier in that regard. It’s written from the perspective of a man in jail writing to his family ahead of Christmas in Australia, sharing his recipe for gravy because he won’t be there to make it for them.
More than 25 years after its release, Australian internet users pay homage to the track by celebrating ‘Gravy Day’ on 21 December, the day the prisoner authors his letter, according to the song.
Paul Kelly’s hit How to Make Gravy is beloved by Australians at Christmas time. Source: AAP / Peter Lorimer
Even Prime Minister Anthony Albanese referenced Gravy Day when answering a question about the .
“Australians speak about what it’s like to have someone who’s in jail over Christmas; they sing the great Paul Kelly song: ‘who’s going to make the gravy’,” he told reporters.
“Well, their (the remaining Bali Nine members’) families had their loved ones in jail for 20 Christmases and that was enough.”
How did Gravy Day get so popular?
How to Make Gravy was released in 1996. It was nominated for Song of the Year at the 1997 ARIA Awards but lost to Savage Garden’s Truly Madly Deeply.
While it’s long been one of Kelly’s most popular songs, it’s had a particular resurgence online in recent years, sparking the unofficial holiday Gravy Day.
A popular parody account called The Gravy Man on social media platform X is thought to have helped popularise the day. Since 2015, it has posted sweary updates about collecting royalties for the song and other memes about it.
“GravyDay”, “Paul Kelly” and “the 21st of December” are typically trending terms on Twitter on the day.
What is How to Make Gravy about?
The song’s protagonist is named Joe. In his letter, addressed to his brother Dan, he says he hopes to get out of prison by July on good behaviour, but in the meantime sends his family best wishes and cooking instructions.
He reflects on the family’s Christmas traditions, including “the brothers … driving down from Queensland” and dancing to Junior Murvin, and speculates it could be “100 degrees or more.”
“I’m really gonna miss it, all the treasure and the trash,” Joe writes.
Joe instructs Dan to pass on his love to family members Angus, Frank and Dolly. He says he’ll even miss someone named Roger, because there’s “no one in here I wanna fight.”
Memes typically flow on ‘Gravy Day’, 21 December. Credit: X
Joe asks Dan to “kiss my kids on Christmas Day” and pleads with him not to hold Joe’s partner Rita “too close” when dancing with her, as he has been fearfully imagining the two of them together.
What does Paul Kelly think about How to Make Gravy?
Kelly plays How to Make Gravy during almost all of his live performances.
“You never know what’s going to happen to the song after you write them,” Kelly told ABC Radio in 2014.
“It was a song that doesn’t have a chorus, it’s set in prison, so I never thought it would be a hit song or anything.”
Kelly wrote How to Make Gravy out of circumstance. In 1996, he was invited to record a song for an annual charity Christmas album, but when he heard the song he was coveting had already been taken, he was encouraged to write an original.
Kelly said he decided to write a unique song from the perspective of someone who can’t get to family Christmas.
“Why can’t they get there? Maybe they’re overseas and they can’t get home. Then I thought, ‘Oh, he’s in prison.’
“The song wrote itself from there.”
The gravy recipe
Joe’s recipe for gravy, which Kelly sings during the song, calls for “flour, salt, a little red wine” and a “dollop of tomato sauce for sweetness and that extra tang”.
Kelly says he’s copped criticism over the years about the recipe from foodies who disagree with the addition of tomato sauce.
