Real Christmas miracle is the Irish mammy
YOU are a mammy. To ensure a wonderful family Christmas, you’ve made the cake and the pudding, and the mince pies, which are in the freezer, and you have mulled wine for the visitors. You decorated the house, wrote the cards, gift-wrapped the presents, which you bought, and cooked a mouth-watering feast.
Afterwards, you’ll be tired, but you don’t mind hoovering up while everybody else watches TV... or do you? Colm O’Regan, author of two Irish Mammies books, says all the family should help, but all too often the work is left to Mammy: “There is the weight of history there,” he says. “It takes a long while to change it, but it will slowly change. Maybe in 100 years’ time, the Christmas landscape will be different. We think we’re a modern country, but often gender roles take a while to break down.”
