'I’ve always believed Christmas is another word for family': Writers on the season of goodwill

The lead-up to December 25 often brings a kaleidoscope of memories spanning the years, but some stand out because they signify significant life changes. We ask four writers to recall an unforgettable season of goodwill

Fri, 16 Dec, 2022 - 02:00

Helen O’Callaghan

We cherish Christmas, perhaps because there’s a constancy about it: Christmas dinner made just how we’ve always loved it, the same treasured decorations on the tree, the familiar rhythms and rituals that spell the magic of Christmas for us.

But change is inevitable and even Christmas isn’t change-proof. Was there a Christmas that changed you? Or that changed something for you? We put the questions to four of our favourite writers.

Sinéad Crowley

“I don’t like Christmas songs. I listen to the radio to hear new music, not the same ones every year so come December I tend to turn the volume down and wait for January. Except for Christmas 1996.

“I had moved to Ennis to work for Clare FM some months previously and I can’t imagine a better destination for a 22-year-old living away from home for the first time.

“The weeks leading up to Christmas were particularly brilliant. There seemed to be a function on every night, some work-related, others very much recreational and most ended with a night out in the Queens in town.

“And then it was time to go back to Dublin for Christmas Day itself. The only problem was though, part of me just didn’t want to. I was happy living in a shared house with no rules. Could I really cope with a week at home in my childhood bedroom?

"Rather grumpily I loaded the Micra with small gifts and a big bag of washing and hit the road. As I was in no particular hurry, I decided to go via Ballina/Killaloe, a longer journey but one of the most beautiful in the country if you got the right day. And I got the day.

The Christmas sun was low in the sky, the air was crisp, the scenery pretty enough to make a Hallmark movie producer weep and then pay his crew extra to ensure they captured everything.

"As I drove along, I felt my mood lift and switched on the radio to hear the last Clare news bulletin before the signal disappeared. And there was Mr Rea, ‘top to toe in tailbacks’.

“I wasn’t quite on holy ground, but I did start to think about where I was really heading. Back to a perfectly cooked Mammy dinner, the folk mass, having real news to tell the friends on Stephen’s Night because I had actually been away.

"As I hit the freeway – alright, the N7 – I finally learned the important Yuletide lesson, that you have to go away to really appreciate coming home.

“I still don’t like Christmas music though.”

Sinéad Crowley’s The Belladonna Maze is out now

Emily Hourican

“The Christmas that changed me? They have all changed me a little.

“Christmas is vivid in a way that birthdays, New Year’s Day, other ‘big days’ aren’t. Not for me, anyway. Every Christmas is accompanied by a shadow parade of other Christmases, running parallel, the space between them strangely porous for that one day.

“There are all the Christmases of childhood, wreathed in shimmering excitement. There, the first Christmas without Santa – I can still taste the disappointment, the film of defeat that lay over everything.

"There too are the hungover Christmases of my early 20s, when it was simply a day to get through.

“There, shining bright, is the first Christmas after my eldest child was born. The magic suddenly restored, even though he was too young to know anything about it, brought by him as surely as if he had carried it in his two pudgy hands.

“In between is the first Christmas after my father died. That was a day we built to and dreaded, a day we worked so hard to make a good day. A day that we all survived, only for me to realise at the end of it that I would need to survive it again, and again. That every year there would be another Christmas without him.

“The one that might really change me though is this one.

For the first time, I will be making the Christmas pudding. My mother, aged 80, has said no more.

"She has held out the baton, and I – eldest daughter – have taken it. That pudding is not so much a recipe as a three-day event. And the pressure is enormous.

"The pudding is the high point of the day for all of us. Every year we talk about where this one stands in the canon. Every year we agree: ‘I think this is the best yet.’

“I doubt that’ll happen this year. Not on my First Pudding, as it were. But it’s time. I’ve been a Christmas passenger for a long time.

"For everything there is a season. ‘Tis the season to step up.”

Emily Hourican’s latest book is The Other Guinness Girl, A Question of Honor

Carmel Harrington

“Christmas is my favourite time of the year. I’m one of those annoying people who hums ‘it’s the most wonderful time of the year’ in November.

"Our trees (yes, trees, I have three) go up to coincide with the Late Late Toy Show. Irreplaceable cardboard decorations handmade by my children rub shoulders with ornaments I’ve collected on my travels in the past 30-plus years.

"These decorations are an uncompleted memoir of my life. Each trinket holds a memory, an emotional trip down memory lane.

“I left Wexford when I was 18 and when I wasn’t working, travelled worldwide. But no matter what, I always returned home for Christmas with my parents, placing my pillowcase stocking on the end of my bed every Christmas Eve.

"I’ve always been a true believer. Nieces and nephews arrived, and a new level of magic came for everyone as we watched their excitement for Santa. And I dreamed that one day I might have a family to pass on my childhood’s treasured traditions. And perhaps start a few new ones too.

“It took me a while – I’ve always been more tortoise than hare – but in 2010, my daughter Amelia was born, a little sister for my step-daughter Eva. And life changed.

"Every milestone moment became a nostalgic note, and my need to be close to my parents and siblings intensified.

"Thankfully, my husband helped make that dream come true by agreeing to leave Dublin and set up a home a few miles from my parents down ‘Wexico Way’. And to our wonder and joy, my son Nate rocked his way into our lives in 2011.

I’ve always believed that Christmas is another word for family and love.

"And I can still remember how I felt that year as I began preparing for our first Christmas together. With Amelia’s help, I placed a new ornament on the tree with the names of our family engraved on it. And I realised that life had gone full circle.

"From magical Christmases in Wexford as a child to magical Christmases in Wexford once again, but this time as a mother.”

Carmel Harrington’s latest novel is A Mother’s Heart

Stefanie Preissner

“My granddad, Sean Keary, died on Christmas Eve 2011 so that was a pretty fundamental change. We were very close. He smoked a lot and I was in my early 20s then and also smoking, but keeping it a secret and he kind of knew.

"There was divilment in him and there was divilment in me.

“He got sick that December. We had a week of him in and out of hospital, not really knowing what was going to happen, him trying to light cigarettes in the bed and me trying to wheel him out and give him what comfort I could. Christmas week, it was clear he wasn’t doing well.

“Christmas Eve we stayed with him all day. That morning my cousin and I drove at speed to the hospital. It was Christmas time and everyone was free to be around, no work commitments.

We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day taking down decorations and organising the funeral. It was difficult to get something black to wear.

"We couldn’t get any dry cleaning done because everything was closed.

“We waked him in his own home in Castleknock. We kept vigil Christmas Night and St Stephen’s Night. There were no funeral services on Christmas Day or St Stephen’s Day so we had to wait.

"Those two days were difficult. They’re meant to be days of celebration and there was very little to distract us because everything was closed, so we were in this holding place.

“I always loved Christmas. Now there’s a sort of sadness when I remember all of that. It gave me a really strong appreciation for hospital staff. They were so kind to us, giving us so much time to be with him in the room, those frontline workers who spend time away from their family so we could have more time with ours.

"It made things we get stressed about seem very frivolous – running out of wrapping paper before you’ve wrapped the last present, forgetting to turn on the oven properly.

“Keeping vigil by a coffin makes you consider what’s truly important – not arguing about who has the last mince pie but the meaning of Christmas. That you get time to be around family, regroup and think about what matters.”