A moveable feast: the traditions that make everyone’s day

A real tree or an artificial one down from the attic? White lights or a flashing, coloured array? Santa presents wrapped or unwrapped – and under the tree or at the end of the bed?

Christmas traditions are sacrosanct for many of us and isn’t it great how the red-suited one and his reindeer customise their deliveries to fit in with the norm of any household?

For new families, there’s a chance to create fresh traditions for Christmas. Partners bring their own childhood rituals to the mix and the resulting blend will probably involve ditching some and creating equally memorable ones for the next generation.

Having the washing machine and drier going from 5.30am on Christmas Eve to ensure the Santa sheets and duvet covers are all freshly laundered on seven beds and a cot for the big night may not be everybody’s idea of festive fun, but Jen Hogan, a mother of seven children, does it cheerfully. It’s a family tradition, you see.

Other rituals include her and her husband Paul taking the children, ranging in age from 15 down to one, into their workplaces on Christmas Eve morning – although not this year, it being a Saturday – then out for hot chocolate that afternoon before going home to bake chocolate chip cookies for Santa.

“Sometimes we test them,” admits Adam (12), for whom Christmas is his “favourite time of year”. He loves the excitement of following Santa’s progress from the North Pole on the NORAD tracker (noradsanta.org).

Jen, who grew up in Tallaght, cooks the turkey and ham on the 24th so it’s all ready to heat up on Christmas Day, just as her parents did. Paul, who grew up in Carlow, recalls that most Christmas Eves or Christmas Day mornings, they travelled to Dublin to stay with his gran, where extended family gathered for dinner.

Santa left his presents unwrapped in a stocking at the end of his bed, while those for Jen were always wrapped and under her family’s tree. In their own south Dublin home, Santa delivers them wrapped and under the tree.

Their eldest child, Chloe (15) says she loves how on Christmas morning the whole family assembles upstairs and their mum goes down first to make sure that Santa actually came – and that he’s not still there.

In the Christmas build-up, Jen, who writes a blog, mamatude7.blogspot.ie, says the children “feed off each other’s excitement”, while Adam agrees that it would be “a bit boring without all my brothers and sister”.

One of eight-year-old Luke’s favourite parts is when “Nana brings up a huge hamper on Christmas Eve with really nice food in it”. Although theirs is a big enough family around the dinner table, when asked if he would change anything about Christmas Day, Luke does say he would love if people came to visit them – they wait until St Stephen’s Day to meet up with extended family.

However Chloe, who sings in the local church choir with her mother at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, wouldn’t change a thing. Asked what her dream Christmas would be, she replies: “Exactly as it is”.

So what of other families and their festive habits?

‘Santa visits in person’

Finnish-born Riikka Brennan is determined to get the best of two sets of traditions now that she’s living in Dublin with her Irish husband Cathal and their three children, Lucas (6), Isla (2) and Alvar, who will turn one on December 23rd.

In Finland they celebrate Christmas on the 24th, when the day kicks off with rice porridge for breakfast. One whole almond goes into the pot and whoever gets it, it is said, will enjoy good luck the following year.

A white Christmas was a given and she recalls spending some of Christmas Eve playing in the snow before a big Christmas dinner, with fish dishes as starters and ham being the main event.

“After dinner the adults would have coffee and we would start waiting for Santa Claus to call in” – being from Lapland in northern Finland, he has time to visit his compatriots in person before starting his epic Christmas Eve journey around the rest of the world.

Riikka remembers him arriving with a big bag and asking children to sing. “He gives the presents to everybody out of his bag and then he just leaves – he’s very busy.”

So they had the rest of the evening to have fun and the following day there would be more play, eating and meeting up with extended family. They would also go to their local Lutheran church either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

Here in their Coolmine home, “on the 24th I try to have my kind of Christmas”, explains Riikka, who works as a dentist with the HSE. She recreates a typical Finnish dinner of her childhood, depending on what ingredients she can source – “Ikea helps”.

They are inviting Cathal’s family, who live nearby, for that Christmas Eve dinner and then they will give the children a few presents to open afterwards.

After that the Irish rituals kick in – leaving food out for Santa and Rudolph. The stockings are opened on Christmas morning and then they go to Mass with Cathal’s family.

“We will have breakfast with Cathal’s parents – more presents for the children. We will stay there, have Christmas dinner and play board games in the evening. I like to drag it out as long as I can,” laughs Riikka.

Their Christmas didn’t go quite as planned last year after baby Alvar, who wasn’t due until January 12th, decided to make an appearance two days before Christmas. While he had to spend one night in the Coombe hospital’s neo-natal care “on Christmas Eve I got him beside me, which was good”, says Riikka. “Then on Christmas Day he got to meet his siblings for the first time.”

So from this year onwards, they have December 23rd birthday celebrations to tack on to their festive routine.

‘Breaking the mould’

It was another of life’s milestones – their wedding – that started a tradition for Lydia and Eoin Cosgrave to decorate their south Co Wexford home for Christmas during the last week of November. When they got married on November 25th in 2011, they couldn’t face doing all that after their honeymoon, so they got the house ready before they left.

Growing up in Co Wexford, Lydia’s parents would not put the tree up until a week before Christmas, which is another reason she reckons she is “such an early starter” now. This year she and Eoin decorated the house when their children Jacob (four) and Isobel (14 months) weren’t there, as a surprise for them.

"They can be involved when they're bigger," says Lydia. One of two children, she remembers how she always woke before her brother on Christmas morning but they had to go into their parents' bedroom before going to see what Santa had left. It could be anytime between 4am and 6am and her parents would then go back to bed while she loved watching The Den on RTÉ.

In Eoin’s family, while the children opened Santa’s presents first thing in the morning, they had to wait until later to open other presents from under the tree, which Lydia says she thought “was just so weird – how could you leave them there and not open them straight away?”

Together 17 years, Lydia and Eoin spent Christmas Day with their own families until they got married. Then they started going to her parents because Eoin, being one of five children, has a much larger family.

This year Lydia is “breaking the mould” by deciding to cook Christmas dinner in their own home for the first time and invite her parents over.

“I am a bit nervous,” she says. “My mam always did turkey and ham, turnip, marrowfat peas and Brussels sprouts obviously. I will do the same but with twists.”

But it seems her mother isn’t done with cooking turkey yet – she will do it all again in her house on St Stephen’s Day.

‘Biggest Christmas fanatic around’

Stacey Doyle and her husband Enda have had the Christmas decorations up in their Co Kildare home since November 20th and there they stay right through to January 6th. Even then Stacey, mother of Shannon (8) and Michael (5), says she hates to see them go.

“I am the biggest Christmas fanatic around. I can honestly say I am in good humour from start to finish!”

Growing up in Limerick, Stacey recalls that Christmas Eve as a child was about getting dressed in their best Christmas clothes and going into town.

“You can’t beat that hustle and bustle of a big city with all the lights and goings on. We would meet up with aunts and cousins before getting the bus back out home.”

She and her younger brother would always sleep together on Christmas Eve and then wake up to find new toys from Santa littered around the living room.

“My parents were young parents, just 19 when I was born, so they really got into it and made it as special as they could,” she says.

Enda grew up in a farm in Co Kildare and his family was more traditional, attending Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

“He got his Christmas presents at the end of his bed, which I always laugh about as I think it’s strange,” says Stacey.

Living in Castledermot with their own children, she and Enda “both try and make Christmas more about enjoying the atmosphere than materialistic things”.

She has continued her childhood ritual of the four of them going into town in Carlow on Christmas Eve “to just mill around, have lunch – and Dad gets a sneaky pint”.

That night, the two children always sleep at the end of their bed, so they all wake up together to go see what Santa has brought.

Not only do they find chocolate coins on the stairs that have fallen out of the big man’s pockets when he went up to check that they were asleep but, last year, his elves papered over the door into the living room, which the children had to burst through to see the presents.

“I have to honestly admit the things our kids love most about Christmas Day is the fact we spend the whole day playing,” she says.

While she and Enda used to go to Limerick for Christmas, since building their own home Stacey likes to stay there and cook dinner, and her family usually come up every second year.

“It’s a big deal for us,” she adds. “I’ve spent a fortune on tableware and dishes so I make it really special.”

A very vegan Christmas

The dietary requirements of Deborah Fogarty and her family make a traditional Christmas dinner an interesting culinary challenge at their home in Bray, Co Wicklow.

She’s coeliac, her husband Ian is vegetarian and their two older children, Chloe (16) and Evan (13) are vegan, while the youngest, four-year-old Olivia, is “omni”.

Deborah is planning to cook a ham for herself and Olivia, and the others will have a meat-free roast from the Irish vegan food company Moodley Manor. Unfortunately that is not gluten free, she says, otherwise she would have just had that too.

“We’ll have carrots and parsnips roasted in maple syrup – I used to do them in honey but vegans don’t eat that,” she continues. “Brussels sprouts that no one will eat, red cabbage and roast potatoes, not in goose fat. Dessert is difficult so probably vegan, gluten-free mince pies with soy custard, and I’m going to try to get a cake in Antoinette’s bakery in Dublin, they do gluten free and vegan.”

She’s from Ballybrack, Co Dublin, and Ian is from Bray, and they both had similar Christmas traditions, with visiting their grannies being the biggest part of Christmas Day.

“I had two grannies and three great-grannies, one still going, so between going to Mass and cooking the meat there wasn’t much time for anything else.”

Now, “instead of wasting Christmas Eve boiling a ham”, they all go into Grafton Street, soak up the Christmas atmosphere and get their dinner in the vegetarian restaurant Govinda’s “where there’s never a queue”.

‘Our presence at home is everything to them’

Eileen Crowley and her husband Paul O’Mahony grew up in Cork, where she loved the Christmas Eve buzz at home preparing food.

"My grandmother lived with us and she loved Christmas too – the dinner, visiting neighbours and cousins, and going to Mass was a big part of our Christmas Day." Also watching television: "The Christmas RTÉ Guide was a huge part too and I still buy it!"

The couple now live on the other side of the country, in Co Meath, with their own children Ryan (10), Ciara (9), Conor (4) and Laura (3). In recent years they have started the tradition of going out as a family for a nice dinner on Christmas Eve.

“We celebrate in our own home and don’t have family close by, so it’s something for us to do and the atmosphere out is wonderful.” Then on the day itself, Paul takes over the cooking to lay on a traditional dinner.

Eileen loves to keep Christmas simple and special. “It’s about making memories and little traditions for our children and spending time with loved ones. As we both work full time, our presence at home is everything to them.”

World of difference: Festive celebrations vs meaning of Christmas

There’s a lot of difference between enjoying the celebrations of Christmas and actually celebrating the meaning of Christmas, says psychologist Shane Martin.

“In terms of rituals, I would love to see a compassionate dimension in the season enhanced among children,” he says. For rituals to be meaningful, they need to connect to the story of Jesus in the crib; to turn the eyes and hearts of children to those in need “is very apt in the context of Christmas”.

The “beautiful messages” of the Christmas story, such as family, compassion, humility and gratitude, have nothing to do with the institutional church, he says. Indeed, because so much has happened within the institutional church, “it is nearly embarrassing talking about these things”, he admits.

Yet if you are a Christian it’s the biggest feast day of the year - it’s the start of everything, points out Martin, author of Your Precious Life – How to Live it Well (Orpen Press). “Or it can just be a season of rituals which everybody else is is doing so we had better do them as well . . .

“If we are all rushing for happiness,” he adds, “we will just be rushing.”

[ swayman@irishtimes.com ]