John Boyne
‘She’d had enough, my mum told us in what I believe is called unparliamentary language’
My mum is the calmest person on the planet. In my whole life, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in a bad mood or lose her temper. For decades, she, along with my two grand-aunts, stayed at home every Christmas morning to cook dinner while my dad, my siblings and I visited relatives and generally got the party started.
About 15 years ago, which was probably the same time she was starting to think the division of labour in our house wasn’t entirely equitable, dinner was served as usual, and by that I mean the five of us sat at the table waiting for three women to serve us like the little princes we were and pretended to be contributing by opening bottles of wine.
When the entire family was gathered, we spoke of how tiring it was to visit aunts, uncles and cousins, while being plied with alcohol. My mum said nothing but raised an eyebrow, perhaps thinking she wouldn’t mind a little of that exhaustion herself.
A family tradition after the main meal was to share a Romantica ice-cream cake and, in due course, she placed it on the table before returning to the kitchen to put the finishing touches to the pudding. Upon her return, she looked around in search of the one thing on the table, besides the cutlery, that she hadn’t had to make herself.
“Where’s my slice?” she asked.
No one said anything. Like a bunch of feral dogs we had descended upon it, devouring the whole thing in minutes without leaving a slice for her. This was the final straw. Had she not been quite a small woman, I think the table would have been overturned. She’d had enough, she told us in what I believe is called unparliamentary language. We were a bunch of selfish good-for-nothings, sitting on our arses all day while she waited on us hand and foot, and the one thing she’d been looking forward to since waking up that morning – the one single solitary thing – was her slice of Romantica, with maybe a scoop of whipped cream on top, and a few sprinkles of Hundreds and Thousands, and we couldn’t even give her that. This was the end of it, she announced. She was unplugging the oven and never setting foot in the kitchen again. It was over! No more Christmases for her! Ever!
We sat there, shamefaced, licking the last remnants of ice-cream from our lips and perhaps this was not the ideal time for me to point out that there was, in fact, a second one in the freezer. I can still recall the look of steel she gave me. I imagine it was similar to the one that reduced the British cabinet to a pile of dust in 1990 when Mrs Thatcher spoke of how they’d betrayed her.
“That,” replied my mum, “is for St Stephen’s Day.”
John Boyne is an author. His latest book, Fire, is available now
Rosita Boland
‘Don’t tell your father, but I am on the phone to the cat’
For many years, my aunt Maine and uncle Gerry came to stay with us in the west of Ireland at Christmas. They routinely brought from Dublin a wheel of brie, a round of Stilton and assorted bottles of wine. One year they also brought their new cat, a black Persian type, whose presence could be described in one word: hauteur. She did not have a name, because they could not come up with the right one, so she remained Cat for the rest of her long life.
My father did not like pets, and had not expected this additional visitor. Cat was banished to the ignominy of our actual coalhole, in a bleak passageway between the house and garage. It was the equivalent of lodging the queen of England in some corrugated iron shed instead of one of her many palaces. My aunt and uncle were appalled, as was my mother, but my father held steadfast.
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The following Christmas, Cat was left behind. We were told she had been left with adequate food and water, and the hot press door had been left open for her, as she liked to sleep there in its warmth among the clean linen.
On Christmas Day, as I scurried between kitchen and diningroom, helping my mother out with dinner, I came across my aunt in the hallway, a furtive expression on her face. She had the telephone receiver in her hand. These were analogue days, when most people were lucky to have a landline at all, and when even local calls cost a significant sum.
I was puzzled as to whom she could be calling, as most of her closest family were around her that day. She put one finger to her mouth.
Not an hour later, the same tableau was in situ as I ferried plates through the hallway from diningroom to kitchen. This time, my aunt beckoned me over.
“Don’t tell your father, but I am on the phone to Cat.”
“Cat?” I repeated, baffled.
“Cat can’t pick up the phone, so the call isn’t costing anything.”
“Why are you calling Cat?” Was everyone’s family eccentric like this, or was it just mine, I wondered.
“Well, I don’t want her to be lonely on Christmas Day,” my aunt said. “She’ll hear the phone ringing, and come out of the hot press and go downstairs. Maybe she’ll know it’s me at the other end.”
Then she dialled their Dublin number again. “I’ll just call her one more time.”
Rosita Boland is senior features writer with The Irish Times
Caitríona Ní Mhurchú
‘I woke up on Christmas Day and realised I didn’t have the goose’
It was my first time cooking dinner for my parents. I decided to go all out. My father’s favourite was goose, it being the traditional Irish Christmas dinner.
I ordered the goose, as many places were doing it at the time.
It was Christmas Eve, and as I was picking it up from FXB’s, my friends were having a drink in Ely wine bar just around the corner, which went on a bit. And then we had food. It went on and we ended up in Renards nightclub. (The premises, which closed its doors in 2009, has since been demolished to make way for a new block of redbrick offices on South Frederick Street in Dublin.)
We had a great night.
I woke up the next morning – Christmas Day – and realised I didn’t have the goose.
Where’s the goose?
I did remember I had brought it to Renards. I rang the club. Unbelievably there were still people there cleaning up. The person who answered the phone had already started to say that no phones had been handed in, like, “Go away”.
It’s not a mobile phone. It’s Christmas dinner. It’s a goose.
“A goose?”
He thought I was taking the mick.
I wasn’t. Please, really, it’s a goose. You need to go and see if it’s still there.
And he went off.
Eventually he came back, picked up the phone and was like, yeah there is a goose, and it was sitting on a bar stool. In the corner.
He went on: “I have to say, in my 15 years working in bars, that is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Can I come in in a taxi and pick it up?
So, I did. Ran in. Got it.
I never told my parents anything. Dinner passed off wonderfully. They were delighted.
I admitted it a couple of years later. You know that goose I cooked? I had left in a nightclub.
Just as I’d finished serving Christmas dinner.
Caitríona Ní Mhurchú is an actor and a writer
Ann Ingle
‘The memory of that evening still haunts me’
It was an early 1980s Christmas. Think shoulder pads and questionable perms. I was a young(ish) widow, rearing eight children while also minding other people’s offspring in my house in Dublin for extra cash.
My domestic life was demanding, opportunities to socialise were rare, so I jumped at the opportunity to join a good friend for an evening out. There was a festive singles night on at the Sachs Hotel and we both dressed up for the occasion. I felt a little uneasy, as it was my first big night out since my husband died, but my friend was an experienced partygoer. “I’ll get them in,” she said as I sat down.
She was gone for ages and when she came back she had a big smile on her face. “He’s bringing the gin and tonics over,” she said. “Who is?” I asked. “I met this gorgeous man at the bar and we got talking. He’s going on to a party and wants me to go with him. Would you mind?” What could I say? I mumbled something about it being okay. (It wasn’t okay.)
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The man in question arrived carrying our drinks. He looked at me in horror and quickly told my friend they should get going to the next party. They couldn’t go quickly enough as far as I was concerned.
The man was the father of one of my charges. I saw him, or his wife, every day when they dropped their little boy at my door before they went to work.
The memory of that evening still haunts me. Not only was I disgusted with him but I was faced with a moral dilemma. I knew I would tell my friend all about it the next morning but what about the man’s wife? Rightly or wrongly, I decided to say nothing.
That Christmas morning, the man arrived at my door with a side of smoked salmon, a reward for my silence. I took it off him but never ate a single slice.
Ann Ingle is an author and Irish Times contributor
Michael Harding
‘That’s the shop where Santa gets his presents’
I was in Cavan one December day to buy a hedge trimmer. It’s a good time to shop since nobody trims much in December. And on my way into the shop I noticed a lovely bicycle for a child on special offer. The big label on the mudguard declared it was half price.
So I bought the hedge trimmer and the bike and stuffed both in the boot, delighted that one important present had been sorted for Christmas.
On Christmas Eve, snow fell and the child went to bed early, convinced that she actually heard Santa’s sleigh in the sky outside her window. Although it was only the wind.
But as she slept Santa did come down the chimney, scattering snow from his boots on the carpet while his reindeer munched carrots in the kitchen.
It’s not easy for Santa or his reindeer to get down a chimney but he even got a bicycle down as well.
When the child woke on Christmas morning, she shrieked with delight on seeing that Santa had brought her exactly what she wanted. And so Christmas ran smoothly.
But the following summer I returned to Cavan to get the hedge trimmer serviced, and the child happened to be in the back of the car.
“That’s the shop where Santa gets his presents,” she declared as we parked in front.
“Why would you think that?” I wondered, a bit horrified.
“Because there was a label on the bike,” she explained. “Just like the name on that shop.”
“Wow,” I exclaimed, “that’s amazing.”
“Yeah, but why would Santa buy stuff in Cavan?” she wondered.
I replied instantly.
“Clearly he knows that Cavan is the best place in the world for shopping. After all, isn’t that why we come?”
“Okay,” she muttered, just about half-satisfied with my answer for the moment. Although I realised time was running out.
Michael Harding is an author and Irish Times columnist
Deirdre Falvey
‘It was, apparently, shocking to witness’
One Christmas Day my brother set me on fire.
It was not intentional, but it was dramatic. It was more than a decade ago: our lovely and loving Christmas dinner that year at my brother Garry and sister-in-law Siobhan’s house. We were all together for our large intergenerational gathering; whatever year it was, my nephew Devin was either a babe or not yet born, and my father, Frank, was still alive. Noisy, busy, good-humoured, lingering, tasty, great crack.
Dympna, my Mum, had made her Christmas pudding (the best). After dinner, as evening fell, I eased the steaming pudding from its bowl and on to a plate on the kitchen counter. Garry warmed some brandy in a saucepan. He poured brandy over the pud and lit it, the dramatic gesture. I moved swiftly to get it to the table while it was still gloriously flaming.
I’m hazy on what happened next, but suddenly I was on fire. We think that Garry poured the last dribble of brandy when it was lighting, but I had already grabbed it, and the accelerant – brandy – spread the flames to me. (Do not try this manoeuvre at home, needless to say. Really dumb.) My hand was burnt, as was my top.
It was, apparently, shocking to witness; not least because there were a few smallies mooching about underfoot. It was over in a flash (ba-boom). Someone put it out, possibly with a tea towel. A burn-plaster suffused with soothing gunge was found for my hand, as was a replacement top. My sister Fiona recalls it as momentarily scary, and that I was a good sport about it. Obviously we were all lucky it wasn’t worse.
The trauma must have blunted my own memory. I don’t recall panicking. I do remember a lovely Christmas Day. My hand must have been pretty painful, but mostly I recall being disappointed my black velvet top – V-necked, with ribbon and beading on the front – was ruined.
But the really good news was that even though Garry set me on fire on Christmas Day, I somehow did not drop Mum’s heavenly plum pudding. Priorities.
Deirdre Falvey is a features and arts writer with The Irish Times
Conor Pope
‘Even my abstemious parents copped the brandy had been watered down’
It should have been the perfect crime and I would have got away with it had it not been for the stupid pudding.
My parents were sober people and I’m pretty sure neither one of them ever tasted so much as a drop of the demon drink. I, by contrast, discovered the pleasures and the perils of alcohol in my mid teens courtesy of my best friend’s parents’ drinks cabinet.
Despite the passage of time I can still recall the horror of the Vermouth and Scotch cocktails that we necked when his folks were out.
Given their abstemiousness, my parents didn’t have much by way of a drinks cabinet, save for one bottle of brandy that a well meaning but misinformed visitor gave them as a gift.
Over several weeks we’d polished off as much of my pal’s parents’ booze as we could without the theft being noticed before we moved on to the Popes’ brandy.
It wasn’t long before the almost full bottle became an almost empty one.
It was becoming problematic but being a resourceful sort, I added some water. Then I added some more. Soon the bottle was almost as full as it once was and while it had lost much of its colour – and probably all of its taste – I figured no one would ever notice. How could they? My parents were too sober and any brandy drinking guests they might have would most likely be too polite to complain.
Then Christmas Day came. There was a plum pudding, as there was every year but this year my parents inexplicably decided treat us to a fire show by dousing it in the house brandy and setting it alight.
My father poured half the bottle on to the pudding and dimmed the lights before extravagantly striking a match, warning us all to step back. He lit the plum pudding. Or tried to. The match was extinguished. He tried again. And again the match was extinguished. It was third time unlucky too.
The penny dropped. Even my Pioneer parents copped the brandy had been watered down. And there was only one suspect. My face burned like the plum pudding didn’t. I pleaded innocence and while I was never formally charged, everyone knew I was guilty as sin and the watered-down spirit went into the bin along with my innocence.
Conor Pope is Consumer Affairs Correspondent of The Irish Times
