Seasonal Survival Guide

'Irish Times' writes share anecdotes, advice and wisdom, to help you get the best out of the Christmas season - or to get through it at least

CHRISTMAS EVE: It comes to a point, when it really is too late to do certain things- ORNA MULCAHY

AT THE time of writing, it is three days away from being the shortest day of the year, so how come this feels like the longest? It starts in the dark with lists of things to be done and things to be bought, and ends in the early hours of the next morning, with the hopeless hunt for the gift that was definitely there, in that bag, but is now gone

Early on is nice. There’s breakfast coffee from the Christmas mugs before a final assault on the shops. The Jervis Shopping Centre is particularly hellish on the 24th but to my eight-year-old it is heaven and so going there has become a tradition.

But like Cinderellas, we have to leave by noon. The rule is, everyone has to be home in the afternoon. This is family time. Or house arrest, according to the teenagers. It's hard to persuade them to curl up on the sofa and read Raymond Briggs' Father Christmasso I do that on my own.

The pressure eases. It comes to a point, around 4pm, when it really is too late to do certain things. It is too late to write Christmas cards. It is too late to ice the cake and it is too late to make a trifle. Let another do it, as my grandmother used to say (she lived to 108).

It is too late to wrap presents in some startlingly contemporary way, say using twigs as fasteners, or sealing wax on the knots. It is too late to organise educational toys for godchildren and so it is time to stuff envelopes with cash instead. It is too late to throw together a Mediterranean supper, since the deli is closed and anyway there is no room in the fridge for anything other than the humongous turkey and bags of breadcrumbs and sprouts.

Unfortunately, it is not too late to peel potatoes for 20 and leave them soaking in the cold part under the stairs.

It is too late to go to the neighbours for the midday drinks, and it is too late to join the contingent who have been reeling around town since lunchtime and are calling you to come in.

It is too early to start assembling a massive doll’s house. That has to be done at the dead of night. It is about time to light a candle in the window and relax. It will be many hours yet before you remember where the missing present – your spouse’s – is: in the bottom drawer at the office.

CHRISTMAS DAY SWIM: There's only one way to do this. Fast. Look. Leap. Kersplash. Ohh! Aaarrrgh! - CONOR GOODMAN

IF YOU WANT to start drinking early on Christmas Day and feel you need an excuse, nothing justifies a pre-lunch hot whiskey like a dip in Ireland’s wintry seawaters.

Anyone who intends to take the plunge should start talking about it now. There is no point announcing your swim on Christmas morning, only to be told you have to lay a table for 27 instead. Then, on Christmas Day, you can ignore entreaties to assemble that unconstructable toy or decipher the rules of that new game. You will be busy preparing for your heavily advertised swim.

You will need cloves, a lemon, a flask, and whiskey. You will need a person who can both drive and operate a camera, and who wants to get out of the house as badly as you do. You will need a warm coat, thermals, a scarf and a hat – for afterwards. And a swimming costume.

When you reach the sea, prime your photographer. They should hold the camera ready as you run to the water. Your swim will be brief. If they have ever snapped a kingfisher scooping a fish in its beak then flying off, they should be up to it.

The photographer’s finger poised over the button, the cap of the flask loosened, you can approach the water. There’s only one way to do this. Fast. Look. Leap. Kersplash! Aah. Oooh! Aaaaaargh! At this moment, the body goes into a sort of shellshock. Tiiiiiime slooooows doooooownnnn. Eeeears don’t woooork. Angels appear. Where’s that beautiful singing coming from? Then you hear another sound. An inner voice that says: Get Out. While You Still Can.

You may find your elegant front crawl and rhythmic breast stroke desert you as you make for the shore, and that instead you flail wildly like a South American political dissident chucked into a piranha pond by the president’s secret police.

Don’t worry about that. The important thing is to dunk your head before you get out. Others will do it, and will make disparaging comments on the shore about any swimmer whose hair remains dry.

Once out, you may marinate yourself in alcohol like a plum pudding waiting for a match.

COOKING THE DINNER: The turkey's drying out nicely, the soup's "done" and the melon is sweating gently - CONOR POPE

AT 8.30am, I look to Delia for advice on cooking the ultimate Christmas feast.

8.31am: She says we should have started preparing in October. Oh dear.

8.35am: Marvel at our excellent specimen of turkeyhood – bought for half price late on Christmas Eve. It weighs in at an impressive 20lb.

8.40am: Eight hours! It’s going to take eight hours to cook! The dream of eating before the Queen speaks dies.

9am: Pretend to make our own stuffing by chucking butcher’s ready-made deal into bowl and kneading it furiously.

9.30am: Open champagne (well, cheap cava).

9.45am: Drink too much, too quickly. Feel woozy and distressed by mountain of potatoes, carrots and sprouts waiting to be peeled and stripped.

10.15am: Finish potatoes, scrape carrots and strip sprouts, making little crosses in the bases as Delia suggests – it’s tiresome but she knows her onions and these crosses may be the closest to religion we get all day.

10.30am: Watch a couple of minutes of It's a Wonderful Lifebefore falling asleep.

11.45am: Wake with a start to Urbi et Orbi. Realise we forgot to cover turkey. Outside already burnt, inside still raw.

12.55pm: Consult Delia again. She has her trifle, her cranberry relish and her gravy made, her vegetables are roasting and the turkey’s coming along nicely, the brandy butter’s chilling and the soup’s simmering on the stove. She’s organising a family carol service – seriously, not a word of a lie. She suggests we take a break too but we’ve no time; we’ve melons to carve, gravy to make and homemade soup, stolen from the mother-in-law’s house, to defrost.

1.15pm: We find the plum pudding in the freezer while searching for soup. Delia’d be cross, but boiling’s off the table now; we’ve got to microwave it.

3pm: Potatoes and carrots are oven-bound and the sprouts are ready for boiling. The turkey’s drying out nicely, the soup’s “done” and the melon is sweating gently on the table, which is set.

5pm: Bedlam. The giant bird makes a break for freedom. The five-second rule becomes the 30-second rule as it’s inelegantly lifted off the floor and slapped onto a carving tray, where it immediately falls to pieces. The sprouts have been boiled to death. The butcher’s stuffing’s grand and all the condiments are jarred, as are most of the diners. The microwaved pudding remains frozen solid in the middle but sure no one likes it that much anyways.

FAMILY BOARD GAMES: If you look nothing like the families in the ads, you're on the right track - KATE HOLMQUIST

THE NUCLEAR family is under pressure on Christmas Day to behave like one. With baby Jesus in his crib as his doting parents gaze down on him in adoration, this isn’t the time for parents and children to hide away in their individual cocoons, even if they insist on the splendid isolation they enjoy the other 364 days of the year.

So out with the board games. You may never play a board game or a card game as a family on any other day of the year, but on Christmas Day it just seems right, somehow. Here’s how to do it.

First: Pick a game and set it up before you tear the kids away from their electronic devices. Otherwise, you will waste valuable time fighting over what game to play.

Second: Tear the children away from their gadgets. If this requires turning off the electricity at the fusebox and lighting candles, so be it.

Third: Sit everyone around the table, with a box of chocolates nearby as an incentive. Accept no arguments. This is quality family time.

Fourth: Read out the rules and make sure everyone understands them. (Failing to carefully negotiate this step will end in a family argument within the first two minutes of play.)

Fifth: Play the game. At this point, your children’s inadequacies in cooperating with others and losing gracefully will be put to the test, as will your patience. If you think you look nothing like the happy families in the TV ads for board games, then you’re on the right track.

When the game is over, back you go to your easy-chair and your glass of Christmas cheer, feeling guilt-free and smug that you’ve had a real traditional family Christmas.

A TV-FREE CHRISTMAS:

I have had the radio on all of Christmas day, streaming music -

ROSITA BOLAND

THE LAST thing I associate with Christmas is television. Growing up in the west, we had a small black and white telly that broadcast RTÉ and nothing else, as there wasn’t a cable option. Sometimes, it didn’t broadcast anything at all. The picture would frequently wobble and then collapse, a state we referred to as “gone bonkers”. My repair method was to give the set a swift slap, jump up and down beside it, and then fiddle importantly with the aerial.

In retrospect, it's unsurprising the telly blew up one day when I was nine, while watching The Brady Bunch. We put the banjaxed television in the garage, where we hoped it might miraculously fix itself if we left it alone and untormented for a while. We forgot about it. A replacement television didn't arrive in the house for years.

My only Christmas-viewing memory – from the days before the television went bust – is of disaster movies, specifically, The Towering Infernoand The Posiedon Adventure. I remember being exhausted when they ended, partly because I wasn't used to watching programmes with the Christmas Day amnesty of no commercials in place. Also, it was difficult to imagine the full horror of fire when all I could see on the screen were variations of grey.

One year, RTÉ screened The Deer Hunter, which I watched, terrorised, for hours with my brother, before a powercut struck. Or did lines go down? All I recall now is transmission ended prematurely, we never got to see the end of the movie, and I've somehow never seen it since.

It doesn’t seem like any of my family missed the television. We just got used to it not being there. My sister, who has four children, the eldest of whom turns 21 this December, has never had a TV in their house. My brother doesn’t have one either. For years, I didn’t bother, and then a friend donated a 1960s portable telly she bought secondhand as a student 20 years previously. I swiftly became addicted to reality television. That piece of vintage went to the Ringsend recycling centre 18 months ago.

Christmas without television is simple. What I do love is the radio at Christmas. I adore the aural selection box of classic carols and cheesy Christmas songs. They’re a guilty pleasure. I could, and have had, the radio on all of Christmas Day, streaming Christmas music. Carols. Good company. A lit fire. Books. A bottle of champagne. That’s what makes my Christmas.

A HOLIDAY WITHOUT ALCOHOL: It can be a tricky time for people struggling with soberity - BRIAN O'CONNELL

FOR MANY – in fact, let’s be honest, for the majority – alcohol is as much a part of Christmas as mistletoe and sweated overdrafts. It’s not so much a season of goodwill, as a series of great nights out (or in) – Christmas Eve, St Stephen’s Night, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, and a few random get-togethers in-between make up the festive break.

It is a time when excess is outed and normalised, a season of brandy and Baileys, of Budweiser jingles and hot ports, of crucifying hangovers and half-eaten dinners.

The non-drinker, then, often approaches Christmas with trepidation and nervousness. Some, just like the kids touring the Willy Wonka factory, don’t quite make it to the end without allowing impulse to undo their overarching personal aim.

My first Christmas as a non-drinker was difficult, like whole summers of adolescent awkwardness condensed into one festive season. I was terrified to walk past a bar in case I was lured by the warm glow inside. Visits to family and friends were edgy. “Shur, have the one,” was the usual response when I opted for a cup of tea.

It takes time to be comfortable with your own sobriety, which makes those first few Christmases as a teetotaller the most difficult. I’ve been off the gargle for close on five years and it’s only in the past two years that I have come to enjoy Christmas again.

This year, I’ll cook Christmas dinner, putting a lot of effort into choosing the right cut of spiced beef or organising the turkey. And this from the fella whose previous culinary highlight was to combine cremated pork chops with boil-in-the-bag rice. I’ll also put time into arranging the table settings, and even getting the music right. This keeps me busy and takes my mind off the fact that I could, or should, be getting sozzled.

I always have a large selection of non-alcoholic drinks in stock – fizzy water and lime mixer, traditional lemonade, sparkling fruit juices, and a range of herbal teas and coffee. It can be a tricky time for people struggling with sobriety.

However, for others, not having to deal with embarrassing drunken moments or suffer through hangovers, while making time for genuine engagement with friends and family, makes a sober Christmas quite intoxicating.

THE RETURNING EMIGRANT: Those who stayed at home have changed. Those who went away have changed - FIONA McCANN

ADS FOR Barry’s Tea, Bus Éireann and what have you – they truly have a lot to answer for. You’d be forgiven for thinking coming home to an Irish Christmas involves warm twinkly cottages and mammies putting the kettle on for a nice cup of tea. But there’s a lot more to it than that. Particularly, if you’re coming home from abroad.

’Tis the season for returning family members, and for those of you who’ve been “out foreign” coming home does not always bring the warm family embrace you had been expecting. The issue is that, on leaving home, you start the process of revisionism that comes with distance, and by the time Christmas comes around, you’ve gone all Sally O’Brien about coming home (remember Sally, from those 1980s Harp ads?).

Those at home know Sally O’Brien was actually looking at every lad in town that way, and now has five kids and twice that number of spare tyres. Yet families share a similar fate in the imagination of the emigrant.

When you come home to reality, the peat fires of yore have been replaced by those fake, flick-switch ones and your bedroom has been “done up” and is now a pastel shade of bland. As for the family you were pining after? It’s more Addams than Cosby, and you remember that it was the driving force behind your original departure.

But also spare a thought at Christmas for those who stayed behind. Not only do they have to get up and go to the blooming airport at half five in the morning on Christmas Eve, they also have to then listen to the prodigal son ramble on all the way home in his newly acquired American accent about the lack of “cell phone” coverage.

Once they get the emigrant home, everybody is only thrilled to bits. . . until the returnee announces they’re now a vegan/parent/Buddhist. They might make up for it with decent presents, but have more than likely chosen gifts that would be perfectly acceptable if everyone was 10 years younger – how they’ve all been remembered.

Those who stayed at home have changed. Those who went away have changed. It’s a recipe for disaster and there’s far too much alcohol involved to prevent a family meltdown and several slammed doors by St Stephen’s Day.

But for all that's changed and unfamiliar to the returning emigrant on Christmas Day, there is still plenty that's the same as it ever was: Fianna Fáil in government, A Christmas Carolat the Gate and Fairytale of New Yorkon the airwaves. There's no place like home.

STEPHEN'S DAY WORK-OUT:

The Sugar Loaf isn't really a climb, it's more of a walk in an upward direction -

BERNICE HARRISON

IT’S FAIR TO speculate that by St Stephen’s Day, on the Sugar Loaf, someone will be absentmindedly singing, “There’s always gonna be another mountain . . . it’s the cliiiimb”, because by then X Factor winner Joe McElderry’s hit single will have lodged as firmly in our brains as the gluttony of the previous day will have parked itself on our hips.

In truth, the Sugar Loaf isn’t really a climb, although those of us who go up it every St Stephen’s Day as part of our family’s Christmas tradition would like to think it is.

It’s more a walk in an upward direction. Well, that’s until you get to the top bit, where the path narrows between tall rocks and the ground shifts a bit and it’s best to use your hands.

The kids love that part because it seems like real climbing. When they were tiny, their dad carried them in a backpack but since the age of four they’ve been able to scramble up on their own, the sense of achievement of having scaled a real mountain glowing from their rosy cheeks when they reach the top.

We’ve done it for 12 years in a row now and the novelty still hasn’t worn off; there aren’t a lot of outings you can say that about.

On top, there is scrubby grass and some slabs of rock to sit on and a 360-degree view. Even on the coldest days, some organised types bring picnics – ham sandwiches and Christmas cake seem the popular choice – which is lovely; others bring dogs, which isn’t so nice. Especially the family with the wheezing pit bull the year before last.

It’s always cold and sometimes windy so you don’t stay up there too long. About 10 minutes does it, and getting down is harder on the calves than the ascent.

It’s jammers on the Sugar Loaf on December 26th. Last year, it seemed busier than ever, for which I blame Pat Kenny, whom I heard saying on the radio that the Wicklow mountain is a favourite seasonal constitutional for his household.

Every year we bump into people we haven’t met for decades. Last year, I met my best friend from school whom I hadn’t seen since sixth year but who was there with her three strapping teenagers. They are the sort of happy, random encounters that add to the layers of memory that every Christmas tradition should provide.

At 501 metres, the Sugar Loaf is the 459th highest summit in Ireland, so it’s not exactly the north face of the Eiger. But it does seem taller because it’s sitting there on its own in the Wicklow countryside. And after a couple of days when your hand is rarely out of a tin of Roses, it does feel like you’ve actually done something that’s good for you.

UNWANTED PRESENTS:

The suspicion must be that the "Wise Men" like all men, would have hated shopping -

FRANK MCNALLY

IT BEGAN 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem. The first recorded Christmas present givers were three visitors, known sarcastically ever afterwards as the “wise men”, who brought what are still the most famous gifts in history: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. What were they thinking?

Ok, gold is rarely unwelcome as a present, however inapt. It remains a good fall-back option to this day. But it’s a grim comment about both frankincense and myrrh that, even after 2,000 years of fame, many of us still don’t know what exactly they are.

I had to check the dictionary, which tells us that frankincense is an “aromatic gum resin”; whereas myrrh, by complete contrast, is a “gum resin, used in perfumery and medicine”.

Of course we should make allowances for the passage of time and for changes in gift etiquette down the centuries. We should consider too that, since the Baby Jesus was born in a stable, air fresheners may have seemed appropriate. Even so. Two aromatically resinous gifts out of three is surely excessive.

The suspicion must be that the “Wise Men”, who like all men would have hated shopping, postponed the tiresome chore until the very last minute and then picked up their gifts when there was nothing else left. Maybe an unscrupulous Bethlehem street trader saw them coming and shouted: “Get the last of the aromatic gum resins — only five shekels each, or two for eight quid.”

However it happened, a Christmas tradition was set. And chances are that later today, or tomorrow, you too will open a present that forces you to compose your face into a fixed smile and say the words specially devised for these occasions: “Oh, you shouldn’t have! No, really, you shouldn’t!” Then you’ll clutch the ironing board cover, or the golf sweater with a pattern like the interference on old televisions, and you will look at the giver with carefully concealed coldness, asking yourself: “Why is this person still my friend/husband/mother-in-law?”

A study by a US economist some years ago found that, in general, gift recipients value their presents at 16 per cent less that the givers pay: but that the mismatch is much larger for those separated by wide gaps in age or distance.

He also found that the greatest present wastage does not occur at either end of the price spectrum, but rather in a range somewhere in the middle: where gifts are expensive enough to assuage the givers’ guilt about making hurried, thoughtless choices, yet cheap enough not to justify further research. And there in a nutshell, I suspect, we have the Three Wise Men.

A NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION: I am thinking of taking up golf... and just as the green fees are plummeting, too - KATHY SHERIDAN

DON’T YOU THINK we’ve suffered enough? Why make resolutions that will only double the self-loathing come January 4th? That, people, is the first miserable Monday of the new year, the day you will inevitably fail the first Eccles cake/French bread/buttery mashed potato test.

Remember, the self-reproof that hits a peak in Christmas week – when those careless carbs mysteriously converge to rule out 99 per cent of your wardrobe – will be long gone, along with the cheapo Prosecco hangover, by January 4th. Which is precisely when a little cheer is needed in spartan lives. So that will be a big, fat no to Bikram yoga, the raw food diet and kettlebells (no, me neither).

So what to do? A quick canvass suggests friends intend to be kinder and quietly contemplative. One resolves to ring semi-estranged relatives once a month, “even if it freaks them out”.

“Front up for colleagues being terrorised at work and be nice to decent priests,” says a (resolutely secular) male.

“Take the brats for picnics instead of McDonald’s.”

"Turn off Morning Ireland– a boost for national morale."

And from a woman considered a useful member of society: “Shut up bitching.” Which sounds rather accusatory, although we’re too scared to argue.

It’s nothing new. Hark to bishop John H Vincent’s suggested resolution from around a century ago: “I will this day try to live a simple, sincere and serene life, repelling promptly every thought of discontent, anxiety and discouragement, impurity and self-seeking, cultivating cheerfulness, magnanimity, charity and the habit of holy silence, exercising economy in expenditure, carefulness in conversation, diligence in appointed service, fidelity to every trust and a child-like trust in God.” Imagine if bankers, developers, politicians had hit on that 10 years ago?

There’s no doubt a meaningful life means being kinder. But let’s not forget the odd walk on the wild side. I, for example, am thinking of taking up golf. Who knew that behind all those pastels and pretty manners and pig-headed misogyny was a dark, throbbing, seething soap opera that makes EastEnders look like a breathy, monotone French arthouse movie? And just as green fees are plummeting, too . . .

RETURNING TO WORK: People will return and say polite things about how it's good to be back in a routine - SHANE HEGARTY

OK, LET’S get the post-Christmas workplace conversations out of the way now.

Delete as appropriate: a) “It was a quiet Christmas. Just us at home. We didn’t leave the house for three days, and only because we needed fresh supplies of brandy butter.” b) “It was a busy Christmas. We spent Christmas Day with my family in Derry and Stephen’s Day with his family in Waterford. I’m more knackered now than I was before the break.” c) “Don’t ask me about Christmas. My lawyers have instructed that I remain silent until the court case comes up.”

The return to work is usually accompanied by a prolonged ennui, a sense of a long year stretching ahead. Or, more accurately, a long month until pay day finally, eventually arrives. The fuss of the festive season gives way to a long, slow drift through penury, so that from the middle of the month the only conversation is about how broke everyone is, when payday is and how long the month seems.

Which is a shame, because there can be a certain enjoyment about going into the office during Christmas week itself. The phones don't ring so much. The e-mail doesn't clog up so quickly. There are seats on the train and there is space on the roads. It has a mildly post-apocalyptic feel to it, kind of like The Roadbut in which people have survived on turkey curry and marzipan.

If you work in a company that deals with American partners or clients, then you will know that most of us don’t have it too bad here. Across the Atlantic, they’re expected back to work on St Stephen’s Day, lest they eat into their 10 days of annual leave. There is a general feeling that should they have any more time off, they’re in danger of turning French.

In Ireland, there will be plenty of people who will get those two weeks in one go, and who will return and say polite things about how it’s good to be back in a routine. And this year, we’ll all add a bit about how we’re lucky to have a job. And then we’ll sit down, and plan an escape route.

Because this is the year when you’ll finally achieve that dream of becoming rich through a brilliant long-harboured entrepreneurial scheme. Or by winning the Lotto. Either would be good.