FOR many of us, Christmas brings out the worst. There’s that bloated, half-asleep state you get into because you’ve had a turkey portion that was too big but you shoved it down your neck just the same.
A plum pudding helping you really didn’t need but it looked so nice on the plate you gobbled it up. That double Bailey’s you took that sort of swirled down your throat and lay in a sickly film over all the other food you’ve crammed in. If Christmas dinner were outlawed, I suspect the average Irish person would live about five years longer. At least.
Yes I know, Christmas isn’t about me, me, me, with my bloated belly and bloodshot eyes. It’s about others. As the man coming out of the off-licence on Christmas Eve carrying a bottle of gin, a bottle of whiskey, three bottles of wine and two packs of lager said: “Christmas – sheesh! If It wasn’t for the kiddies, sure you wouldn’t bother about it at all.”
Maybe it was great when you were a child, and we should be striving to Make Christmas Great Again (MCGA), set our sights on that wide-eyed innocence of childhood. I’ll pass on that. When I remember Christmas, it’s the lies that come to mind.
There’s the Big Lie that parents tell their children year after year, which means that when they stop telling it, the child will suddenly realise that those nearest and dearest to them are bare-faced liars.
Then there are the lies children are forced to cough up in school. In Omagh Christian Brothers' Primary School, teachers liked to mark the coming festivities by asking pupils were they going to hang up their stocking? The rest of my class were all big into stocking-hanging, so of course when it came to my turn I said that I hung up my stocking as well. Inside I was asking myself, “What stocking?” The only stockings about our house belonged to my mother and five sisters, and while none of them was scrawny-thighed, their stockings were far too narrow and flimsy for all the things I wanted for Christmas.
And then there was the teacher’s question about what you got for your Christmas dinner. “Turkey!” the Mulholland twins and the rest of the class would yell, and I felt pressured into telling that lie as well, even though the catechism said no reason or motive could excuse a lie. We kept poultry, and it was always a goose that was selected for our Christmas table – the turkeys we sold. The goose was a greasy bird to swallow and as often as not I found myself picking at something that looked suspiciously like its rear end. But when Brother Bonzo asked what dinner fare was served in our house on Christmas Day, I swore that we too ate turkey.
And then there was the myopic Santa, who seemed to either misread my message to him or wilfully ignore it. So even though I lusted after a bike and told him so repeatedly, he kept on giving me The Film Fun Annual or a circular contraption with holes in it into which you tried to manoeuvre these tiny ball-bearings. Okay, Film Fun gave me Jane Russell and Betty Grable, two big strapping girls, but they weren’t a bike, and a bike was what I really really wanted.
Then there was the difficulty of remembering the Real Meaning of Christmas. On Christmas morning all ten of us would be levered into the Austin 8 so my father could drive us all to Omagh chapel, where the priest was allowed on this most special of days to say three Masses, not one. Having come down the altar steps to pray 'De profundis', he’d immediately after tell us “Introibo ad altare Deo," remount the steps and off we’d go again. My father had an eye for a bargain (three for the price of one!) and stayed for all three Masses while we all yawned and suffered knee-lock. There was no other choice.
Christmas? Sure if it wasn’t for the kiddies you wouldn’t bother at all.:
Nollaig shona daoibh.
