Gareth O'Callaghan: ‘No room at the inn’ as history repeats itself
The message of Christmas has become obscured by other people's noise — let's reclaim its true spirit
A little girl visiting the crib at St Catherine's Church next to the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank city of Bethlehem in 2003. Picture: Musa Al-Shaer/AFP/Getty
As a young boy, the 8th of December, or simply “the eighth” as my Cork relations called it over the years, signalled the real start of Christmas.
It was a day they would plan for weeks, and then it would arrive: up in the pitch dark for the early train to Dublin, ahead of hours of shopping and sightseeing; and then they would arrive in the early afternoon to meet my mother whom they hadn’t seen since the previous December, hugs and gifts exchanged, laughter filling the house, sandwiches and mince pies, a glass of sherry, and then back to Heuston for the last train home.
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