POLL: Which type of Irish mammy are you at Christmas?
We like C- words in Ireland but the C-word that instantly elevates an Irish woman’s stress levels to toxic heights and can only be uttered for approximately eight weeks every year is of course the heinous word ‘Christmas’.
Once the word is uttered, the poor unfortunate woman is instantly propelled into a flurry of manic, consumerist activity; it resembles an adrenaline shot to an Irish woman’s heart, in the manner of Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, just without the overdose.
From a young age, we are bombarded with shameless Christmas marketing and twee advertising that is little more than well-disguised emotional blackmail.
As if Catholic guilt wasn’t enough to contend with, we then live in fear of becoming Festive Failures.
Images of Christmas Day in warm, welcoming middle-class homes with tasteful red and gold décor, inhabited by clean-living, carol-singing, silly-jumper-wearing families are etched into our subconscious.
These Hallmark scenes of familial joy and laughter are totally unrealistic and completely unattainable.
A more pragmatic goal would involve a Christmas day where:
Nobody bursts into tears.
Nobody passes out in a drunken stupor.
The atmosphere is not thick with unspoken resentment and bile.
No turkeys are thrown at close relatives in fits of rage.
When it comes to the ominous task of prepping for Yuletide, two distinctly different types of Irish woman emerge.
The Psychotically Organised Individual has posted all her Christmas cards, prepped all the food and completed all her Christmas shopping by December 5.
This is the kind of woman who gets up at six every morning, ‘just because’, armed with j-cloth and spray cleaner; the kind who always has lovely nails, shiny white runners and ironed jeans, whose children play clarinet and will eventually go on to become presidents.
When Christmas Day dawns, her only outstanding chore is to gently heat some pine needles in a pot of water to ensure that peacefulness, serenity, and the unmistakable scent of efficiency and organisation emanate from her home.
If the aforementioned description invoked some involuntary snorting and disdainful guffawing, you will most likely fall into the latter category: The Seasonal Slacker.
The Seasonal Slacker will spend the third week in December doing the following:
Firstly, she hires a small lorry and parks it outside the front door of the nearest Toymaster. Once inside, she will spend an average of €800 on shiny, plastic, breakable items and may even engage in a physical scrap with a granny from the Midlands over a Frozen Snow Glow Elsa.
Unfortunately for the Seasonal Slacker, said granny has a mean southpaw and she is reduced to buying her Elsa online for the extortionate price of €150.
(She will always leave the shop without purchasing the obligatory sack-load of batteries so that Christmas morning is rendered a total disaster, with her husband calling her an eejit and her children crying hysterically because Santa hates them after giving them toys that do not work and a doll that sings ‘Let it Go’ in Chinese.)
She will also have come to the sickening realisation that she once again has failed to buy or post any of her Christmas cards in time; this does not mean, however, that her children have to be tarred with the same brush.
She can achieve a small modicum of redemption for the family by buying Christmas cards for her kids to hand out at school.
And so a quick detour into Eurosaver.
Feeling quite smug and self-satisfied, and a bit like the Psychotically Organised Individual, she is now ready for her most difficult assignment: the purchasing of presents for the in-laws. This means a trip to the much-lauded International Christmas Market.
Upon arrival, our heroine becomes panic-stricken when she realises that most of the stalls at the market are selling Frankfurters, mulled wine and industrial-strength beer.
An hour later she starts her in-law shopping (for presents, not for in-laws) with a belly full of German hops and pig’s ears.
Items that previously looked cheap and undesirable are suddenly infused with ethnicity and charm.
When she wakes the next morning she will gaze in horror at the selection of woolly hats with ear flaps, pan pipes and chipped Russian dolls that she has purchased for her partner’s family.
The only solution is to hurry to the nearest Marks & Spencer’s and buy six €50 vouchers.
She then nips into the food section to stock up on nibbles in case any of the neighbours drop by over the festive season. She will likely fall prey to the 3-for-2 consumer-confidence scam.
This will result in her spending a further €150 on posh cocktail sausages and miniature Peking duck.
On her way out of the nibbles section, a large sign catches her eye: it would appear that M&S are now offering the typical Seasonal Slacker the option of buying their entire Christmas dinner in a box for the altogether reasonable sum of €250, with free Christmas crackers thrown in.
The picture on the box shows a very attractive family tucking into a veritable feast of succulent turkey, orgasmic roast potatoes and cheeky brussels sprouts.
Seasonal Slacker is sold. She is no longer a Festive Failure.Christmas is saved.
Total cost of Christmas shopping for the Seasonal Slacker — somewhere in the region of €1,500.
The look on her face when she realises her son has distributed very adult Christmas cards to everyone in his senior infants class — priceless.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
