SNIPPET: Frank O'CONNOR was the pen name of a well-known writer born in Cork in 1903, the only child in the family. Michael O'DONOVAN was very close to his mother Minnie, and took her maiden name for his literary work. He is best known for his tender short stories about life in Ireland, much of his material taken from his own experiences. Born into poverty with an abusive, alcoholic father, he was to go on to become a librarian, a member of the IRA during Ireland's Civil War, director of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, translator of Gaelic poetry and self-taught in several languages, a talented writer. He lived and taught in the USA in the 1950s, dying at his Dublin home in 1966. O'CONNOR's bittersweet short story, "Christmas Morning," is about a poor Irish family with two boys - the narrator, Larry, who doesn't do well in his studies, skips school, gets into fights and other minor trouble, and his "perfect" little brother, Sonny, who likes school, is good at spelling and is never in trouble - a fact, that Sonny loves to point out to his mother, much to Larry's chagrin! Their father is a moody alcohol who spends his money at the pubs, angering his wife who now finds herself worrying how they are going to get through Christmas with so little. She manages to scrimp and save for a candle, a little cake and a present or two for the children. Meanwhile, Larry reasons that if he is going to get anything from Santa in his stocking he had better stay up all night so he can explain away his bad behavior and convince Santa to give him a model railway. He is counting on the fact that Santa is "a reasonable guy." Father hasn't come home by the time Larry and Sonny go to bed, and Larry falls asleep despite his best efforts to stay awake. At dawn he gets out of bed to see what is in his stocking and is bitterly disappointed ... "Santa had come while I was asleep, and gone away with an entirely false impression of me, because all he had left me was some sort of book, folded up, a pen and pencil, and a tuppeny bag of sweets. For a while I was too stunned even to think. A fellow who was able to drive over rooftops and climb down chimneys without getting stuck - God, wouldn't you think he'd know better? Then I began to wonder what that foxy boy, Sonny, had. I went to his side of the bed and felt his stocking.... he hadn't done so much better than me, because, apart from a bag of sweets like mine, all Santa had left him was a popgun, one that fired a cork on a piece of string and which you could get in any shop for sixpence. All the same, the fact remained that it was a gun, and a gun was better than a book any day of the week. The Dohertys had a gang, and the gang fought the Strawberry Lane kids who tried to play football on our road. That gun would be very useful to me in many ways, while it would be lost on Sonny who wouldn't be allowed to play with the gang, even if he wanted to. Then I got the inspiration, as it seemed to me, direct from heaven. Suppose I took the gun and gave Sonny the book!. .... He was fond of spelling, and a studious child like him could learn a lot of spellings from a book like mine. As he hadn't seen Santa any more than I had, what he hadn't seen wouldn't grieve him. I was doing no harm to anyone; in fact, if Sonny only knew, I was doing him a good turn which he might have cause to thank me for later ... Perhaps this was Santa's intention the whole time and he merely became confused between us. It was a mistake that might happen to anyone. So I put the book, the pencil, and the pen into Sonny's stocking and the popgun into my own, and returned to bed and slept again. As I say, in those days I had plenty of initiative. It was Sonny who woke me, shaking me to tell me that Santa had come and left me a gun. I let on to be surprised and rather disappointed in the gun, and to divert his mind from it made him show me his picture book, and told him it was much better than what Santa brought me. As I knew, that kid was prepared to believe anything, and nothing would do him then but to take the presents in to show Father and Mother. That was a bad moment for me. After the way she had behaved about my lying, I distrusted Mother, though I had the consolation of believing that the only person who could contradict me was now somewhere up by the North Pole. That gave me a certain confidence, so Sonny and I burst in with our presents, shouting: 'Look what Santa Claus brought!' Father and Mother woke, and Mother smiled, but only for an instant. As she looked at me her faced changed. I knew that look; I knew it only too well. It was the same she had worn the day I came home from playing hooky, when she said I had no word. 'Larry,' she said in a low voice, 'where did you get that gun?' 'Santa left it in my stocking, Mummy,' I said, trying to put on an injured air, though it baffled me how she guessed that he hadn't. 'He did, honest.' 'You stole it from that poor child's stocking while he was asleep,' she said, her voice quivering with indignation. 'Larry, Larry, how could you be so mean?' 'Now, now, now, ' Father said deprecatingly, ' 'tis Christmas morning. 'Ah,' she said with real passion, 'it's easy it comes to you. Do you think I want my son to grow up a lair and a thief?' 'Ah, what thief, woman?' he said testily. 'Have sense can't you?' He was as cross if you interrupted him in his benevolent moods as if they were of the other sort, and this one was probably exacerbated by a feeling of guilt for his behavior the night before. 'Here, Larry,' he said, reaching out for the money on the bedside table, 'here's sixpence for you and one for Sonny. Mind you don't lose it now!" But I looked at Mother and saw what was in her eyes. I burst out crying, threw the popgun on the floor, and ran bawling out of the house before anyone on the road was awake. I rushed up the lane behind the house and threw myself on the wet grass. I understood it all, and it was almost more than I could bear; that there was no Santa Claus, as the Dohertys said, only Mother trying to scrape together a few pence for the housekeeping; that Father was mean and common and a drunkard, and that she had been relying on me to raise her out of the misery of the life she was leading. And I knew that the look in her eyes was the fear that, like my father, I should turn out to be mean and common and a drunkard. After that morning, I think my childhood was at an end."