"At last, Christmas Eve dawned. We brought in the holly which we had collected from the wood the previous Sunday and in a short time holly branches were growing from behind every picture - everywhere but around the clock, which was my father's sanctum and could not be touched. Then the Christmas tree. Our house was surrounded by trees: my father planted them all his life and he loved every one of them. At Christmas he suffered deciding which of his little ones had to be sacrificed. A big turnip was cleaned and a hole bored in it for the candle; this was decorated with red berried holly and placed in the window. That night no blinds would be drawn so that the light would shine out to light the way for Joseph and Mary. Before supper the Christmas log was brought in and placed behind the fire in the open hearth. Banked around with sods of turf it soon sent out a glow of warmth. Our gramophone was normally kept safe in the parlour but at Christmas it took its chance in the kitchen. Every Christmas my father bought new records and we played them non-stop. Silence was restored for the news on the radio but we young ones had no interest in the news; to us there was no world outside our own. After news we all got on our knees for the rosary, something I never enjoyed usually, but on Christmas night it became real; this was the actual birthday of the baby. Before going to bed my father performed the usual ritual winding of the clock. We hung our stockings on the old-fashioned crane convenient for Santa as he came down the chimney, and then mother ushered us all off to bed, the more responsible ones with a sconce and candle. Ours was a large room with two beds and an iron cot with shiny brass railings and knobs. If the night was very cold we had a fire which cast mystic shadows along the low timber ceiling while the moon shone fingers of light across the floor. Try as I might to keep my eyes open to see Santa appear out of the shadows, I was soon carried into the world of nod and woke to the excruciating pleasure of sensing that Santa had been. The gifts in the stockings were always simple and indeed often of a very practical nature but the mystique of the whole occasion gave them an added glow. Having woken mother and father to display for them Santa's benevolence, those of us going to first Mass set out in the early dawn to walk the three miles to the church. Candles glowed from the farmhouses in the surrounding valley, making this morning very different. The lighted church welcomes us, but it was the crib rather than the Mass that was special to me, to whom these were no plaster dummies; they were the real thing. Afterwards we either walked home or got a lift from a neighbouring horse and trap. Breakfast was always of baked ham, after which the remainder of the family went into the second Mass of the day. Before leaving for Mass my mother placed the stuffed goose in a bastable over the fire with layers of hot coals on the cover. There it slowly roasted, filling the kitchen with a mouth-watering aroma. The clattering of the pony's hooves heralded the family's arrival home and finally after much ado we were all seated around the table for the Christmas dinner. Was anything ever again to taste as good? My mother's potato stuffing was in a class of its own. We finished our dinner as the King's speech began on the radio. My father had Protestant roots and always instilled in us an appreciation of things British as well as Irish. My mother listened to the Pope, my father to the King of England, and to us they were both as much a part of Christmas as Santa. Our new records were played again and again, and toys were savoured to the full until after supper exhaustion finally won the day and we dragged our small, weary feet upstairs to bed. It was all over for another year, but each year was another page in the book of childhood." -- Excerpts, "To School Through the Fields - An Irish Country Childhood," Alice Taylor, pub. circa 1988. > > ==== IrelandGenWeb Mailing List ==== > Please make sure to visit RootsWeb, our hostmaster, at http://www.rootsweb.com > >