Nazeem Hussain is a writer, actor, presenter and Australian stand-up superstar. He will be hosting the Compass Christmas Cabaret.

Let’s begin with the tough question: what does Christmas mean to Nazeem Hussain?

Oh God! Um, Christmas to me is a day of celebration … um … it’s the day before lots of great sales. But it actually reminds me of just happy times. I’ve always had some sort of Christmas experience, whether it was my mum dressing up as Santa, or some random Sri Lankan Christmas event when I was a kid. We’d just go from shopping centre to shopping centre to get free candy from different Santas. Obviously, being from a Muslim family, we never really had, like, Christmas dinners and big Christmas family gatherings, but because it was a day off, we’d often just hang out with other people who didn’t really have anywhere else to be.

Nazeem Hussain presents the Compass Christmas Cabaret.

That’s the experience of a lot of people at Christmas.

Yeah, a lot of people are pretty lonely on that day. Especially with so much of the marketing of Christmas, it’s only probably in the last handful of years that we’ve begun to appreciate more that it’s not going to be so good for people who don’t have loved ones there. I’ve had some great experiences, but I understand it’s complicated.

The show that you’re hosting, the Christmas Cabaret, will presumably be a boon for anyone feeling lonely at Christmas.

Yeah, it’s a gift – from the taxpayer to the taxpayer. But yeah, it’s a fun show. It’s a great lineup, of super-talented Australians who people know, and who people may not know. But what I like about it is that it’s presented by Compass, the Religion and Ethics arm of the ABC. It’s a cabaret, it’s a comedy, it’s a music and spoken-word show. But religion isn’t necessarily a punchline, which I feel like is a nice change.

It gives it a certain seriousness – not that everyone’s being super serious – but there’s a gravitas because it’s Compass.

There’s a kind of respect I think, like there’s people from different religions, there’s a Hindu, a Jewish person, a Muslim, there’s some atheists. There’s lapsed Christians, there’s some Christians. I don’t think we often hear from religious people, being religious and their ideas around religiosity, in a positive way. This show captures some of that beautiful message.

As a Muslim, do you feel like things are getting better in Australia, in terms of how hard our country makes it for people of a minority religion?

I think that if you identify as a practising religious person in Australia right now, you probably are identifying with a diminishing segment of the community. I don’t think we celebrate religion in Australia the way we used to – and for good reason: in Australia religion is often tied up with certain institutions that have done a lot of horrible things, so I understand. But in my life, I’ve met a lot of deeply religious people from the Muslim community and other religious traditions who have a lot to offer and whose worldview is helpful and constructive and critical and nuanced. I just think, especially as a stand-up, the instances in which you see religion pop up in that community is when it’s used as a bit of a punchline. The ideas of religions are reduced to just, the man in the sky, just the very simple ideas. I get that it’s funny, but I think religion is not respected in the way that I think maybe we should. Because there’s a lot of religious people – religious people and non-religious people deserve to be respected.

This is a very sweet, warm, very Christmassy kind of sentiment you’re expressing.

Oh, well, I’ve always loved Christmas, and I think I probably love a little bit more people for whom Christmas has a spiritual or religious significance. I think in my later years I enjoy the company of people who are religious, because they have an appreciation for practices and ideas that are increasingly becoming weird in Australian culture.

So you appreciate the company of religious people, even if they’re not your religion?

Yeah, yeah. Coming from Sri Lanka, putting aside the politics, it’s so diverse from a religious perspective – Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims. They’re all doing their own thing, but there’s public holidays every other week, and people just know – “oh yeah, Muslims are doing their Eid thing, Hindus are doing that, Christians are doing this”. They all just respect each other’s weird beliefs, like yeah, you do that, we do this. There’s not this sort of condescension which I feel is like a growing sentiment in Australia. And again, I understand, not for no reason: but I do think ideally it’d be nice to turn the corner where we start to appreciate each other’s perspectives.

Turning from religion to comedy: has the past couple of years been a tough slog?

Oh my God, this last year has been amazing. It’s been one of my favourite years doing stand-up. I feel like a born-again stand-up. Getting on stage, almost forgetting that I have experience behind me, doing gigs that feel like the first gig of my life. It’s such euphoria. Last year was tough, the year before probably even tougher. I think a lot of stand-ups stopped doing stand-up – sadly, those who couldn’t afford to continue bowed out. Which is good for those of us who survived because we have more of an audience to buy tickets.

Compass Christmas Cabaret is on the ABC on December 20.

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