Why Christmas Eve is the real high point of Christmas

THIS is the real ‘big day’. For me, Christmas Eve is the high point of Christmas, writes Colm O'Regan.

It was always thus. Right back to medieval times, when true loves were wont to give increasingly elaborate, cumulative presents. Christmas Eve meant a pear tree — just about in time for planting — and a partridge that could be a pet or a meal. There was no indication of the chaos that was to follow as the other 363 presents arrived. All the joy of receiving 12 partridges, 22 turtle-doves, 30 hens, 36 calling birds, 40 gold rings, 42 geese, and 42 swans was completely soured by the realisation that all those presents would have to be slaughtered or pawned to feed and house the 40 maids, 36 ladies, 30 lords, 22 pipers and 12 drummers.

The Continentals know it. Christmas Eve is the bigger day for many non-Anglo-Saxon countries. They do all their family meals and gift-giving then. They probably have fish and no spuds, the perverts.

Christmas Eve is when homecomers are in their best form, delighted to be home, not yet frustrated at the lack of broadband. They are full of news.

Maybe announcing a pregnancy or bringing a new partner down to meet the parents, a partner who sits in the father’s chair by accident (an incident sure to be held against them until the first grandchild arrives).

The house has settled down now. Wrapped presents are underneath the tree. Mince pies are doing the rounds.

The first box of Roses has been opened and it’s not yet a chore to eat them. Visitors are on the way somewhere, so they ‘won’t stay’, they’re ‘just popping in. ‘No, honestly now,’ they ‘won’t even sit down’. They’re just leaving a bottle-shaped present that they themselves received an hour earlier. One bottle of Powers whiskey can sustain a whole village.

The RTE Guide Christmas edition still has a good chunk of two-week television to look forward to. You can read with a sense of impending doom what’s going to happen tomorrow in the four-hour Christmas soaps specials. McCoys will be closed in Fair City, so people are crammed into tighter, more oddly-lit rooms, saying things like ‘what’s going on Paul? What’s she doing here?’ Eastenders will have an anthrax attack, Emmerdale will purge half the cast in an alien invasion. We can’t get over how the pub is open on Coronation Street.

At this stage, all presents are potentially good ideas. 24 hours later, perhaps half will be welcomed. It’s like the start of an awards ceremony, where the audience is full of potential winners. At the end, it’s 90% confirmed losers.

Christmas Eve Mass is the best attended of the year. Nearly everyone goes: the devoted, the yerra-I-dunno, the atheists, the ‘I-guess-I’m-more-spiritual?’ all meet together. The priest will break out the emergency communion plan for Christmas, big funerals, and the missions. Back-up Ministers of the Eucharist will answer the call. The altar is full of servers in the hope of a Christmas bonus.

Those ‘down from Dublin with a big job, they say’ act all insouciant, but, clearly, they are catwalking up to communion in a swanky coat. It won’t be until Stephenses night, in the local pub, that they are cut down to size.

Those who haven’t been in a while are still ‘and also with you-ing’, instead of ‘and with your spirit’. The priest could tell them to stand on one leg and they might think it was part of the new Mass.

There’s a choir and they get a round of applause,– the most effusive response of the year in an Irish Catholic church. A congregation that barely mutter ‘Give us Barrabas’ during the long gospel on Palm Sunday is whooping after the last few bars of ‘Christ Dii-ii-ii-vinnnnnnnnne’.

And off we go into the night, waiting for Santa and hoping he’ll just bring the one partridge this time. Happy Christmas.