Christmas is still a few sleeps away but the festivities have already kicked off on the Australian calendar with many around the country celebrating what's become known as "Gravy Day".

It's a fairly new phenomenon, gaining popularity thanks to meme culture on social media.

And now it has evolved into a uniquely Australian institution in the lead-up to Christmas.

What is 'Gravy Day'?

It's not an official holiday or anything, but more an Australia cultural phenomenon referencing the song How To Make Gravy by Paul Kelly.

And it is celebrated on December 21 — or, if you want to me more accurate, "the 21st of December".

That's because the narrator of the song makes reference to this particular day.

How do you celebrate gravy day?

That's up to you.

But it would typically involve playing How to Make Gravy at least once and singing along.

Shouting "give my love to Angus" is encouraged.

When did gravy day become a thing?

Kelly's original version of the song came out nearly 28 years ago in November, 1996.

It was well received back then, being nominated for Song of the Year at the ARIA Music Awards in 1997 (but it lost to Savage Garden's To The Moon and Back).

And it was nominated for Song of the Year at the Australasian Performing Right Association Music Awards in 1998 (Dean Manning won the honour for the song Even When I'm Sleeping, performed by Leonardo's Bride).

But How To Make Gravy has had a massive resurgence in popularity on the internet over the past decade.

A handful of people were posting about the song on X — then still known as Twitter — on December 21 using the hashtag #gravyday as far back at least 2013.

But it didn't become a full-blown trend until a few years later, thanks largely to a Kelly parody account called @itsthegravyman.

It was run by fellow musician Lizzie Irwin who, as she explains in this article for Vice Australia, was inspired to make the account after seeing Kelly perform at the Kawana Community Hall on the Sunshine Coast in 2013.

"I … wondered if someone who was lauded and revered as Australia's vital storyteller ever felt like gloating about the fact that the opening riff to How To Make Gravy alone had the power to make venues full of people mutually holler in joy, cry or eagerly pinch the person next to them (but mostly cry)," Irwin wrote.

"I highly doubted that the immensely modest Paul Kelly would be the gloating type so I did that for him with my Twitter account."

The first tweet was just "gravy", followed by a smattering of profanity-laced tweets about music royalties and gravy.

Eventually it grew a large following, to the point that in 2015 Junkee declared the person behind the account deserved to be Australian of the Year.

"I've felt so bloody powerful parodying a bloke and finally garnering the attention of Triple M's pub talk who dubbed me 'some weird bloke on Twitter,'" Iriwin told Vice.

"My existence has never felt more valid."

This online chatter introduced a new generation of fans to the song.

Two years later, in 2017, we started seeing articles about Gravy Day pop up thanks to people posting memes about the song on social media.

But it wasn't just about people joking on the internet, with Kelly coming into the ABC Radio Melbourne studio to record this version of How To Make Gravy:

The @itsthegravyman account no longer exists, but its cultural impact lives on.

Now, Gravy Day has become an institution.

Each year, we see phrases like "gravy day" and "how to make gravy" among the most commonly searched keywords on Google around this date.

And regardless of what radio station you're tuned into, the odds are that you'll hear it at least once (it literally came on the radio when I got into my car this morning).

Back in 2021, Kelly released a special pandemic version of the song, when it took on new meaning for families and friends separated by border closures.

And this year, streaming company Binge capitalised on the fandom of the song by making a film about the characters in How To Make Gravy.