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Do you remember the Christmas when...?
There was our first Christmas as a married couple, in a flat in Mullingar, where - full of enthusiasm - I invited my mother-in-law to join us. The Women’s Weekly cookbook was the bible as I planned a meal to impress her. However, the flat came with an oven - a very small oven - which had just two rings on top. To add to the stress, if the oven was turned on, only one ring worked.
I managed to produce a three course dinner of (mostly) hot food. I was, however, convinced I had poisoned everyone when I became really sick that night.
After three days, when I was the only one who was sick, I put two and two together and - forty weeks later - our son James was born.
Christmas 1987 was our first Christmas living in America, and we spent it in a very snowy Boston with my Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Paddy. They gave James and Ian their first set of ice skates and, when we all went skating on the village pond (with hot chocolate and carol singers), I honestly thought we had been beamed up onto a film set. On Christmas morning, after the boys opened their stockings, Ian (3 years old) went over to the unused fireplace and shouted up the chimney, “Thank you, Santy!”
The most magical Christmas Eves were in Garrymore, Co Mayo. Every year, there was a pageant in the candlelit Ballyglass Church where all the local children had a part to play. From the shepherds with tea towels on their heads, to the kings with tin foil covered cardboard crowns, the children made their way up the aisle to the beautiful singing of ‘Oh Holy Night’ by the Heaney sisters. Over the years, Niamh and Aishling were angels, kings, Mary and, as teenagers, they were in the choir. The various roles in the pageant marked their growth. When we came home, John would pop into Mary next door for a “wee glass of whiskey” (it was never a “wee” glass).
Christmas, 2009 was the year John went for a pint on Christmas Eve with James and Ian for the first time. He came home beaming that his boys had bought him a pint, and then initiated them into the traditional “wee glass” with Mary next door. That Christmas was great craic and included killer games of monopoly, nachos at midnight, fights over the last bowl of trifle, and we took one of my favorite family photos.
Twelve months later was a total contrast. John had died suddenly just five weeks earlier, and there was a sadness in everybody and everything. To add to the misery, the country went through several weeks of snow and ice. We had to draw water to the sheep and even into the houses when the pipes froze. Trying to make the best of it, we ended up buying the smallest, barest Christmas tree in Claremorris at 4pm on Christmas Eve and made an effort. But it was an effort.
Sitting down to dinner, we did try and have the craic, but the empty chair at the head of the table could not be ignored.
Moving right along to 2018, when we went to Mexico where James and Nataile lived. They had gotten engaged during the year, and it was lovely to meet Natalie’s family and their friends in Mexico. It was a very different Christmas in the country which gives us poinsettias, and where I had my first Christmas Day swim. Is it cheating to have it in the warm waters of the Pacific? We even introduced The Twelve Pubs to Mexico that year.
We are together again, this year, in New York. I won’t be doing a swim, but I think we might try the Twelve Pubs. There’ll be ten around the table and, as the family grows, we will adopt new traditions and make more memories.
If this is your first Christmas married, having children or having a gang of in-laws over, enjoy and I hope you have a decent-sized oven. If it’s your first Christmas on your own - or with an empty chair - I hope you find peace and joy somewhere.
Nollaig Shona daoibh
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