Christmas in the Fifties (in Rural West Cork)

by Nuala Ní Loinsigh © 2012

Christmas was a special time in my childhood, full of excitement and activity. In early December, the writing of letters and cards involved us children, as my mother gathered ideas from us. This task was done on a Sunday night, when Dad went for a scoráiocht (visiting the neighbours) and we had Mom to ourselves. The two most important letters were sent to Sr. Patricia in Manchester and Sr. Cecilia in Glasgow, my father's sisters. Her letters were not very long but conveyed the most recent news of the family. Each letter had a postal order for ten shillings enclosed, a generous sum from a family who had little to spare. 

The letter contained a comment on the price of cattle, pigs, milk and eggs. The weather of the previous summer and fall was described, in so far as it affected us, in saving the main crops of hay, turf and corn. Our stage in school was related and a comment on our diligence - or lack of diligence - with our lessons. We, as children, made suggestions and, as we got older and more mature, corrected my mother regarding commas and full stops. Mom had an idea that full stops were to be used sparingly and she would respond to our criticisms with "I have a full stop up there and that's enough".

A Musical Christmas

© 2012 Maírtin Ó Connallan

It was Christmas Evening

I settled softly into the old armchair

Sipping a glass of warm mulled wine

All was well

And God in his heaven

A huge yew log

Hissed and spat

Midst the dying embers

A gentle calmness lulled me

Into another place and time

A soft Overture of strings and wind and flute and drum

Then bodhrans

And amhrans

Then up they started

First on stage came

Paganini

And then sweet Grieg

And next Rossini

Right behind Henry Mancini

What Christmas fayre

I did not dare

Disrupt the concert

of the old armchair

Wee Daniel and Big Tom

Accompanied Luciano with Nessuan Dorm-a'

Slackening of pace

Comes Chopin slowly

Then Schubert's "La Truite"

Wafted soft and lowly

Then Finbar singing Vogel's "Green Fields of France"

Followed up by Wogan

With "The Foral Dance"

Scott Joplin

In Rag time

Doing C and W

With Patsy Kline

Nigel Kennedy

And Liam Og Flynn

With a Celtic version

Of "The G String"

Max Boyce and the Welsh Male Choir

Hymns and Arias

By the Yuletide fire

Here's Michael Coleman

Backing Leonard Cohen

Fiddling his way

Through "Going Home"

On comes Edith with Eminem

Rapping out "Je ne regrette rien"

Is that Shane

With Johann Strauss

Backing Count John on

"Bless This House"

Boxcar Willie

And Finbar Wright

With a country version of

"Holy Night"

Janis Joplin high as a kite

Placido Domingo

In full flight

Haendel with "Messiah"

Tom Jones, "Delilah"

Rimsky Korsakov and Matt Molloy

With a Russian version of "Danny Boy"

Who's that with Callas

'Tis T.R. Dallas

Hitting high C's

At Caesar's Palace

Mirrors cracking from side to side

I bolted upright

Eyes open wide

In the hearth the shattered glass I spied

What a glorious musical Christmas