Talk about Christmas in my family always starts very early. As far back as September or October we are talking about gifts we will buy each other and passing on hints and ideas we have picked up along the way. It raises a lovely feeling of anticipation and excitement at the approaching holiday and certainly brightens the otherwise dull winter months.
This is, undoubtedly, the biggest holiday in Ireland - probably due to the fact that 85% of the population claim an affiliation to the Roman Catholic Church and on that one holiday, at least, most of them will attend mass. The four weeks leading up to Christmas Day is Advent in the Catholic Church and a time for reflection on and preparation for the celebration of the birth of Christ. Midnight mass is usually the most attended mass of the year on Christmas Eve - although mass in our parish has recently switched to 9pm, rather than midnight. Christmas Eve also means leaving a candle burning in the window to welcome the baby Jesus into the world and strangers into your home.
In recent years it has become impossible for my family to sit around the one table for the Christmas dinner - with three married sisters and ten children between them. The solution is that one family comes for dinner and the rest arrive in the evening time, to exchange gifts and generally raise the noise level in the house as high as possible!
Christmas dinner is always comfortingly predictable with turkey and ham, brussels sprouts and carrots, roasted and boiled potatoes, rounded off with trifle for dessert. For those who still have a corner of the stomach to fill, there's always plenty of traditional pudding and iced, fruit cake.
Rarely will you find anyone away from their family on Christmas Day and you'll have a difficult time finding anything open - forget the American tradition of going to the movies - not in Ireland.
St. Stephen's Day on the 26th affords an opportunity for a unique Irish tradition. It involves "wren boys" who historically searched the countryside for a wren, then knocked it on the head and placed in a box with holly or upon a pole decorated with holly. The wren boys paraded up and down the streets with the wren wearing petticoats or some other costumes and singing the wren song. Fortunately, the killing of the bird doesn't happen any more but you may get a group of children singing carols on your doorstep, expecting a few coins for their trouble.
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