The afternoon of Christmas Eve, just as it’s beginning to get dark, Mum opens the black oak sideboard in the hall.
We crowd around, the little ones shoving and pushing. Frantic to see the treasures inside.
The whole house already smells of Christmas – the ham simmered overnight in its blanket of floury paste, now stripped and baking in the oven with bay leaves, cloves and onions. The Christmas tree, fetched by Dad with two of the bigger ones earlier in the day, waiting for its decorations in the dining room, smells of forest and cut wood. A wobbling stack of ivy pulled off the granite walls in the garden for winding through the bannisters, sprigs of holly for tucking behind pictures, sits by the stairs.
Mum lifts the fairy lights up from their bed of tissue paper, dried needles from last year’s tree rustling in the hollows in their cardboard Mickey Mouse box. The tissue paper, re-used year after year, feels like soft cloth.
It’s Eldest Brother’s job to check each bulb inside its plastic casing. ‘Gently’ says Mum.
The lights never work first time.
Eldest Brother, breathing hard, protruding tongue clasped between teeth, his go to concentration mode, says it’s a closed circuit. It can’t work until all the bulbs are A.1. I’ve no idea what closed circuit means. But I like the sound of the words. Closed circuit. A One.
The little ones, jigging with impatience, carol: ‘Put them on the tree!’
Eldest Brother hunts through tissue paper for spare bulbs. Miraculously two appear. Sellotaped to a piece of card and stowed safely away by Mum last Christmas.
The spare bulbs work! The little ones go silent as Eldest Brother gingerly carries the lights over to the tree. A bump against Dad’s chair and they all go off again. No!
Everyone has ideas where the lights should go. Up higher! You’ve missed the bottom branches! The yellow ones are hidden!
‘Too many bloody Indians’, Eldest Brother complains.
Mum is now taking out the glass balls and bag of tinsel. One ball has smashed, its jagged edges sticking up like a broken eggshell.
Next the cardboard box marked Calor Gas tied with yellow satin ribbon. Inside are the crib figures wrapped in more tissue. A larger cardboard box, decorated with ivy, a painted yellow star inexpertly fixed over the centre, awaits. The figures, sent by Mum’s cousin in Germany, are very beautiful. A young Madonna, a baby Jesus with a detachable gold crown and upraised arms in a crib made of briars, old man Joseph grasping a shepherd’s crook fixed through a hole in his fisted hand, forever getting lost as the little ones take it out to play with. ‘Where’s Joseph’s crook?’ There’s a lying down brown cow, a standing grey donkey. The three kings bearing gifts must be hidden behind the box until after Christmas and its their turn to arrive.
After Christmas? An unimaginable concept.
The little ones argue over who gets to put Baby Jesus into his manger. The bigger little one thumps the smaller one in the back: ‘You did it last year.’
Howls of outrage.
‘Look’ says Mum, ‘here comes the music box.’
Also from Mum’s cousin in Germany, the music box is a wooden cylinder painted gold and indigo. Wound up, it solemnly twirls, plucking out Silent Night, sending kneeling angels holding golden trumpets, around and around.
‘Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!’ goes Eldest Brother. ‘What?’ ‘German for Silent Night’, says Middle sister. Eldest Brother claps his heels together and does a Nazi salute. All the big ones laugh. But I feel afraid. Everything about Hitler, the Nazis, the War, the terrible camps, frightens me. Could it all happen here? A tank appear at the end of our road?
The little ones jostle to wind the music box up, send the angels twirling.
Mum holds up ‘Flying Santa on a Goose’. Bought in Woolworths by one of the big ones he immediately stole the show. Looped from the light over the dinner table, Santa, a skinny rakish version, sits astride a goose with articulated, real feather wings that go up and down as he sails backwards and forwards over the heaped plates, the crackers, the red wine, the silver candelabras – until OOPS! he’s sailed too close to the lighted candles. A strong smell of burning. The goose feathers, Santa’s beard, are singed! Dismay from the little ones: Santa. The big ones shout with laughter. Mum laughs so she gets tears in her eyes.
Finally here’s the Christmas fairy. She’s from Mum’s childhood and has her own box. The little ones are a bit frightened of her. She looks like one of those dolls that might snap awake at midnight and do stuff.
A perfect china face, china arms and legs, a soft fabric body. Real, pale blonde hair, a small pursed mouth, blue eyes, a tiny patch of rouge on each cheek. She is wearing an ankle length dress made of real satin trimmed with lace.
Eldest Brother, standing on one of the dining room chairs, ties her to the top of the tree using the yellow satin ribbon that holds the crib box together. We crowd around the tree: ‘A little bit to the left!’ ‘No a little bit more to the right!’ Eldest Brother gets fed up: ‘She’s fine.’
Christmas fairy, a little lopsided, looks down disapprovingly.
It’s dark. Dad comes in. He’s smiling a lot. His hat on the back of his head. Even before the front door closes the young artist who took him out drinking is speeding away from the house in a battered cream estate.
Dad walks unsteadily around the hall, arms out: ‘My darlings’. Mum goes: ‘Oh for heaven’s sake’. Dad can’t stop smiling: ‘All my ducklings.’ He puts a hand on my shoulder. He avoids Mum’s eye. ‘I shink maybe I’ll go up to bed’. ‘Good idea’, Mum says in a voice that means Goodbye and Good riddance. ‘Happy Crissmass’ Dad says, standing swaying at the bottom of the stairs, waving a bony hand. ‘Go on’ Mum says.
None of us says anything. We don’t mind Dad being drunk. But we don’t want Mum to be cross. Not on Christmas Eve. One of the big ones goes down to the kitchen.
When all the glass balls, small ones and big ones, have been hung on the tree, the tinsel draped and the crib set up with the music box beside it, the big ones say they’re going to make supper in the kitchen. There’s ‘too much going on in the dining room’. The big ones have made Mum sit down and have a sherry while they cook. The bottle says ‘Dry Sherry’. No matter how many ways I try to think it , I can’t work it out: how can a liquid be dry?
We’re allowed our first slices of ham. It’s delicious! Sweet and warm and juicy and chewy all at the same time. I wonder how long can eating and happiness last?
*****
It’s Christmas morning! We’re all awake before it’s light. Mum and Dad have left a long, grey, hand knitted stocking at the end of every bed. The bulging stockings, knitted by Granny, spend the rest of the year in the sideboard. They all have that special Christmas smell.
We reef open the Santa presents – a potatoe gun, bubbles, a false nose and moustache set, a board game with a wooden spinning top. At the bottom, always, a tangerine.
We stand outside Mum and Dad’s bedroom door. ‘When can we go down?’ Sleepy voices from inside call out: ‘Go back to bed. It’s not even six o’clock.’.
By eight Mum and Dad have come down. Big Sister has started breakfast. Everyone is hungry. Us young ones because we’ve already been awake for hours. Mum and Dad and the big ones because they’ve been at midnight mass, wrapped presents and sneaked them into our rooms in the Santa stockings.
The big presents are still all under the tree. Dad says we have to line up, outside the dining room door, littlest first, . He puts the Messiah on the gramophone, the hundred voices swelling up and filling the house, Hallelujah! Halleluhah! Ha,le,eh,eh,luh,jah! He tells us Handel cried when he first heard it performed. In Dublin. We only half listen. All we want to do is get inside.
One, Two, THREE – and Mum opens the door.
We thunder in.
Mum and Dad stand either side of the tree, calling out our names. There are the big presents under the tree from them first. Then presents from Granny. Then smaller presents from uncles and aunts. The big ones get presents from girlfriends and boyfriends.
Silence as presents are ripped open. Shouts of delight. Everyone makes a pile in separate areas.
By the time the excitement has started to die down the big ones are bringing in breakfast. Because it’s Christmas they’ve cooked extra, piling the rashers and sausages, the black and white puddings, the tomatoes, onto the big oval dish. They bring the eggs and the toast in separately. It’s always the best breakfast of the year. Mum and Dad, at either end of the dining table, give each other a quick look: first stage of Christmas successfully completed.
The preparations for the big Christmas dinner start immediately after breakfast is cleared away. Chopping onions, squeezing sausages out of their skins to make the stuffing for the turkey. Scrubbing and peeling the enamel basin full of potatoes. Making the bread sauce. Getting the plum pudding onto the stove for one last boil. Cleaning the brussels sprouts. Scrubbing the carrots. Checking the trifle in the pantry has properly set. Shoving fistfuls of stuffing into the turkey’s yawning cavities.
Next a small party of us are off with Mum and Dad to visit the maternity hospital where Mum’s father was once Master. The matron, large and spotless, has coffee, sherry, Christmas cake, mince pies laid out. Fig rolls and squash for us younger ones. She treats Mum like a beloved, special daughter. Mum looks beautiful in her green tweed suit, the gold watch brooch she won for a Point to Point on the lapel.
Every year Mum brings in ‘layettes’ for the new-borns whose own Mums don’t have much money. Mum and the sewing lady who comes to the house to ‘turn’ sheets, make clothes, re-line old jackets, ‘turn’ cuffs, make a few every time the sewing lady comes. They’re set aside in the sewing chest of drawers, ready for Christmas.
Mum and Dad both have sherry. Then coffee. We have mince pies, burning our tongues on the scalding fruit.
‘Why are they called ‘mince’pies’?’ we ask Dad in the car on the way home. Dad says it goes back to the 16th Century. They used to be made with real meat. Even, sometimes, tripe. ‘No’ we scream, making getting sick noises. Dad, who can persuade us to eat almost anything, hasn’t succeeded in getting anyone to eat tripe. It’s good for you! Every so often Dad buys some in the butchers and cooks it up in a saucepan of milk with half an onion. Mum says it smells horrible. I say it looks like floor cloths. Mum says it smells even worse than floor cloths. Nobody will taste a mouthful.
‘Dad. No! Yuck!’.
By the time we get back to the house the older ones have Frank Sinatra on the gramophone and the house is filled with the smell of Christmas dinner cooking. We younger ones bring our presents up to the drawing room where Eldest Brother has lit the huge Christmas fire – long curved black turves, chopped logs that smell of Sundays in the country.
Dad goes to collect Granny, Mum’s mother, to bring her over for the big feast. We sit her in Mum’s chair by the fire.
We hear screaming downstairs. A plate smashing. Big Sister and Mum have got into a fight. Dad goes down to calm things. We hear raised voices. A door slams. My brother laughs: ‘Madame having one of her fits’. He means Big Sister. Granny pretends not to hear. Dad comes back: ‘Help is needed’ he says. The middle ones, groaning, get up and go down.
Finally the call comes: Dinner’s ready!
We force ourselves not to charge down the stairs shouting and jostling, remembering Granny and how old she is. Her arm feels like a dry stick inside her soft woollen sleeve. Dad, holding out a crooked arm, says he will ‘escort’ her.
The dining room is beautiful. The sideboard and the table are lit with candles, decorated with ivy and holly, a circle of crackers in the centre, the sideboard crowded with huge glistening turkey, the ham, bowls of heaped mashed potatoe, a dish of roast potatoes, bowls of brussels sprouts and carrots, silver boats of bread sauce, the gravy boats, a dish of cranberry sauce.
All the best cutlery is out. The best china. The nicest glasses. The best napkins.
Dad carves. There’s quiet as everyone waits. Another wait for gravy, bread sauce, cranberry sauce to be passed around. You look at your plate, so beautiful with the meats and stuffing and roast potatoes, vegetables, gravy and sauces.
Everyone has to wait until the last person is sitting down, before you can begin.
Yes!
Pieces of delicious turkey meat dipped in gravy, roast potatoes cooked in turkey juices, mashed potatoe with butter dripping down the sides, ham with cranberry sauce, stuffing. Every mouthful is delicious. The turkey bought from a farmer Dad knows in Meath. The ham ordered from the pork butcher in town. The potatoes, brussels sprouts and carrots from Dad’s garden.
The grown-ups and the big ones have wine. Granny, no higher at the table than the little ones, a shrinking doll in satin and pearls and silvered hair, raises her glass, smiling. To Christmas! shout the big ones.
My brother, carving knife and fork raised, calls out: ‘Who’s for seconds?’ The adults decline as we smaller ones line up. My brother always gives himself the best bits when he carves, and seconds never taste as good as firsts, still, I can’t resist. ‘No thirds’ Mum says, ‘that’s just greedy’.
More Christmas please, more!
A rest and then, puddings.
The dinner plates are cleared. The plum pudding is carried in. Then the trifle. Dad pours a glass of brandy over the plum pudding and holds a match to it. Blue flames dance and curl around its moist sides. We all want to get bits with the blue flames still going but they flicker out as the plate lands. Brandy butter runs down the hot sides. There’s trifle for those who don’t like plum pudding. Or for greedy ones – like me ! – who want both.
For the grown ups there’s a special wine Dad has bought for Mum – a desert wine. ‘Do they make wines in the desert?’ The big ones laugh. ‘Of course not!’ ‘It means a wine you have with your pudding, silly.’
Finally it’s time to pull the crackers. You cross your arms in front of you and share a cracker with the person either side. You pull like mad because you want to get the toy, the hat and the joke. Even though the grown-ups say they’re always rubbish, everyone pulls hard. There’s a little explosion, the smell pop guns make, a scattering of rolled up paper hats, toys and jokes. One of the littles sitting beside my brother screams. ‘He got TWO!’ Dad finds another cracker and pulls it with them, making sure they win.
We all hope to get good joke and make everyone laugh:
‘What did the stamp say to the envelope? Stick with me and we’ll go places’.
‘How did the human cannonball lose his job? He got fired’.
‘What is the nearest thing to Silver? The Lone Ranger’s bottom.’
The grown-ups, now in great form, laugh like anything. We young ones all want to own the fish that middle sister got in her cracker. It’s made of red, see-through cellophane. When you lay it on your outstretched palm both ends curl upwards – as if the fish was alive.
Finally it’s time to clear up.
When the last dishes, cup, plates, have been carried into the kitchen and washed, the meats, puddings, turkey, ham, trifle put away in the pantry, everyone gathers upstairs in the drawing room where Dad has stoked the fire up into a fresh blaze.
Granny is going to stay the night. She tells us stories about growing up in Chile. About how Mum and her brother used to ride out on their ponies, for miles and miles. How Mum was afraid of nothing. Mum looks stern. We know, though she never says, she doesn’t like Granny. We don’t really know why. Big Sister says Granny was very bossy when Mum was young. We can’t picture it. Tiny ancient little Granny was so bossy she made Mum cross? Forever? It doesn’t make sense.
Dad suggests we all play the ‘truth’ game. Mum says no, that game always ends in trouble. We take out the new Cluedo. Eldest Brother wins: Colonel Mustard. In the study. With the rope. Mum says, ‘that game is going to give them nightmares’, but she’s not cross.
*****
It’s January by the time the tree has to come down. The soft, early dark light of December has been replaced with the harsh grey blue light of January. There have been fights. Big sister has broken up with her boyfriend. ‘Oh do blow your nose,’ Mum says, which makes Big sister howl even more loudly and rush out of the room.
The tree has to be taken out of its bucket filled with stones and pulled out through the back door and down into the garden.
Middle sister says how come there is always one ball left on the tree no matter what? The ball this year, a small purple one, clatters across the tiles as Eldest Brother drags the tree out, leaving a trail of pine needles. Mum says, ‘Someone get the hoover’. ‘Hey Someone! Get the hoover would you!’ says Middle sister. ‘Don’t you be cheeky’, says Mum .
In the garden my brother hacks off the Christmas tree branches with a small red handled hatchet, piling the lopped branches up in a rough stack. ‘Stand back’ he says and throws on a cupful of paraffin. Whumpf! The hacked branches, the armless tree, spitting and crackling go up in a shaking blue haze. I see Mum looking out the window. Suspicious. Her face saying: What did that boy throw on the fire to make it blaze like that? I thought I’d told him not to.
Inside everything has been packed away into the sideboard – the Mickey Mouse Christmas lights, the crib figures from Germany, the singing angels from Germany, Flying Santa on a goose with his singed beard, the plastic bag of tinsel, the glass balls, the long grey hand knitted stockings.
All back into the dark of the sideboard until next Christmas.
Middle sister has taken out the hoover. Pine needles go rushing up the metal tube in a storm of clicking. Like dried out, dead insects.
*****
Dad is in bed. He’s not feeling well.
Christmas is over.
How could any of us have known it was to be the last Christmas? The last happiness?
How could any of us have imagined it was the beginning of the end?
We didn’t. How could we?
