IF you find yourself running around this week frantically trying to organise Christmas, why not reclaim the true spirit of the season by travelling back in time to fifty or sixty years ago and lose yourself in An Island Christmas. Written by Micheál Ó Conghaile, the book is a memoir of little over 120 pages, where the author brings us back to the island of Inis Treabhair, off the Galway coast, where he was brought up in the 1960s and 1970s. First published in Irish – Nollaig Oileánach – Micheál did not speak English until he was 11-years-old, and lovingly recalls his family and the traditions that existed on the island during this festive time of year when life was much simpler and slower, especially for island people. Now uninhabited, only five or six other families lived on Inis Treabhair when Micheál was growing up with a population of forty souls. Now given over to the gulls, Micheál gives us a mental map of the island, the townlands where families lived and the daily routines and jobs that all the family had to take part in, whether working on the land or bringing the turf and supplies in from the mainland in a currach. Religion played a large part in island life and no more so than at Christmas. Through the chapters Preparing for Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Between Two Christmases we get a sense of the rituals that were a part of island life each December, from slaughtering the pig; waiting eagerly on parcels to arrive from relatives in England and the US; stories by the fire and by candlelight in a house with no electricity; and rowing to Mass in Leitir Mór in Galway on a currach.
