AS a child, I found Christmas an occasion of sin. The catechism was totally clear: "No reason or motive can excuse a lie." But in my early years at the Christian Brothers school in Omagh, I lied and lied again.
“Christmas!” Master Scully would say, rubbing his hands as he walked the rows between the desks. “What do you eat at Christmas, Conaghan?”
"Sir, we eat turkey, sir!."
Then he’d go round the whole class and ask each boy the same question, and each boy would say, "Sir, a turkey!" Then he’d come to me: "What do you eat on Christmas Day, Collins?" and I’d shout, "Sir, we eat a turkey, sir!."
We did nothing of the sort. We ate goose. We kept geese, my mother rearing and selling them, and at Christmas one of them would be kept back so we could eat it. Roasted and shiny brown, it’d be doled out to the family. There were ten of us, including my parents, and you got good bits of the goose depending on your age, starting with Daddy and Mammy. I was the youngest of the eight children, so I often wound up with something greasy and stringy that looked a bit like goose neck. Turkey it certainly wasn’t.
The same rigmarole applied to hanging up stockings on Christmas Eve. "What do you hang up on Christmas Eve, Mullholland?" And Midge Mulholland would shout, "Sir, I hang up my Christmas stocking, sir!" They all hung up their Christmas stockings, so of course I said I hung up my stocking too.
Another lie. There were stockings in our house, but my five sisters wore them. I wasn’t allowed near them, and even I had got my hands on one, they were far too narrow and long to hold the things that Santa would bring. Instead of stockings we set our polished shoes out on the tiled kitchen floor, with my father’s boots at the top end and my wee shoes at the end. The presents that were on or beside the shoes were yours.
The Pope, we were told, had given a dispensation for the priest to say three Masses, not one, on the big day. All in Latin. So the PP would finish the first Mass with the De Profundis prayer, then mount the altar steps and start a second Mass (Introibo ad altare Dei), and similarly for a third.
We all had to sit through the three, our stomachs growling from hunger – eating forbidden after midnight if you wanted Holy Communion – our knees aching, our thoughts, miles from the Mass, at home with our still-wrapped presents. Finally, weak with three-Mass piety, we’d leave the chapel and head for home to rip our presents open.
It was always a disappointment. My note to Santa would have politely asked for a bike, but the best he could come up with was a child’s scooter or a toy gun or a Film Fun Annual.
Christmas dinner was eaten in the dining room – the one day of the year when that room was used – and we’d chew on our various bits of goose and devour the trifle and then the plum pudding and Christmas cake.
By then we were so full we could hardly move. You either fell asleep in a chair or started a fight over whether Santa had made a mistake, giving the Osmiroid fountain pen to my brother Paddy, who hadn’t asked for one, instead of to my sister Tesie, who had.
Too much Mass, too much grub, too much Santa let-down. And, of course, too many lies.
As the man coming out of an off-licence loaded with six-packs, wine, vodka and whiskey said: "Christmas? Sure if it wasn’t for the kiddies you wouldn’t bother."
