The people who make Christmas special for all of us

THE FAMILY TREES

A real Christmas tree creates instant festive atmosphere. But what’s it like to grow the trees and is it hard work?

To grow Christmas trees you have to take a long-term view, says Martin Kelleher whose father started farming forestry on their lands outside Naas, Co Kildare, in the 1980s. The growth cycle is 10 years with the trees ready to cut after seven or eight years.

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Pruning is a key part of making a Christmas tree look like a Christmas tree.

Kelleher's Christmas tree farm comprises some 50 acres of trees divided into five-acre plots. Martin, his wife Madeline and their sons Darragh (19), Ciaran (16), Kevin (15) and Seamus (11) are all part of the pruning team that shapes the crop into the beautiful isosceles triangular specimens we want to buy.

“We’re always pruning,” he says. “We pay the lads to do three hours at a time to keep the crop looking smart. We don’t prune the trees that will be cut this year as it spoils their look.”

The five acres cut each year delivers 6,000 to 7,000 specimens, but 20 per cent of the crop won't make the market. These are mulched and spread on the fields as fertiliser. As much as 60 to 70 per cent of trees grown in Ireland are exported. At Kellehers they send almost half of the crop to Northern Ireland.

What makes Kelleher’s special is the fact that you can drive out there, pick the tree that you like and have it cut down in front of you – no more guessing what the tree inside the netting looks like. The trees range in price from about €40 for a 5ft (152cm) specimen to €60 for a 9ft model.

The family also provides coffee and sweets to help turn the experience into a bit of a day out. While you are there you can also pick up a bag of properly seasoned hardwood to burn at home and to evoke two key festive scents: the delicious woody open fire fragrance and the fresh forest pine scent of the tree.

The optimum Christmas tree is bushy all the way to the ground. You shouldn’t be able to see the trunk. Ideally it should be kept in water to keep it fresh.

Don’t put the tree up too early, he counsels. “It’s a lot to expect it to last from December 1st to January 6th. It will last far better if you put it up around December 15th,” he adds.

Kildarechristmastrees.com

SUPREME SANTA

American actor Dan Young is considered the capital's most authentic Santa. Residing in the St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre he is the right size, right age and sports a real beard. So what's it like stepping into those big shoes?

It was an Irish girl who brought the American to Ireland but it was donning the red suit that made him a better man, he says.

Young studied acting while at college and had started working as a cartoonist and caricaturist doing kids’ parties and other events here. A chance meeting at a kids’ party with the then manager of the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre – his kids were at the party – led the manager to ask him if he had ever considered stepping into those big black boots.

He already looked the part. “I’m a big guy. I have a bushy black beard and a round belly and he could see me as Santa. Things were looking slow for carricaturists and I loved the idea of playing the character. I had been quite a good actor in my early 20s and it was also relatively good money. I thought, ‘Why not?’, ”

He took his lead from the Santa in the classic film Miracle on 34th Street but kept his own voice and accent. "I didn't try and do the Santa voice. I cringe when I hear Ho Ho Ho Ho. I also hate to hear someone talking down to kids." It went over so well that first year that there were queues all around the mall.

Kids loved his authenticity. When you’re in the outfit you’re on, he says. “I become a different person; a smarter, wiser, nicer person. I see Christmas as a birthday party with presents and singing and joy shared with all the world. When I bleach the beard and I’m sitting on the throne in my costume I become him.”

When he started, the father of two had kids age 10 and eight, so he had to explain that he was Santa’s helper. One day he came face to face with a 10ft tall version of himself adorning the back of a bus as part of the centre’s advertising campaign. But the kids also got to brag at school that their father was Santa Claus, Young recalls.

Are there any downsides to the job? “When I first started I was worried that by playing this role I’d have used up my cheerfulness and be grumpy at home. The only other disadvantage is that for the last dozen or so Christmasses my wife Claire has had to do all the preparation and present buying.”

Stephensgreen.com

LIGHT UP YOUR LIFE

What’s it like to live Christmas almost every day of the year?

Electrician Gabriel Byrne didn't expressly set out to create the festive spirit all year round but his Fantasy Lights business in Walkinstown, Dublin 12, means he now lives it more than 360 days a year, drawing customers from the four corners of Ireland who see the displays that fill his 7,000sq ft showroom as a Christmas tradition, as much part of their countdown as an Advent calendar. One regular used to travel from the Blasket Islands every December to see what was new.

For more than 30 years he's been lighting up our lives with his festive illuminations, after meeting the head of the Blackpool Illuminations at a trade show in 1980s. "At that time they had the biggest lighting display in the world – bigger than Vegas – and I saw the potential in extending the holiday season by getting people to invest in designed lighting schemes."

You can see his work at The Dropping Well pub in Churchtown where they still light up a waving Santa from that era.

His big break came when he was asked to design the lights at Shannon Airport. This was in the early 1990s when emigration was horribly high and having family home for Christmas was a part of almost everyone’s life. “The welcome started the minute you step off the plane,” he recalls. “Everyone from the region brought their kids to see the lights.”

He also built the angels that used to adorn Henry Street and designed the O'Connell Street in Limerick display. The big bow that wraps itself around Brereton's Jewellers on Grafton Sreet and the waterfall lights outside Weirs are also his.

In the last seven years the mainstreaming of LED lights means the electricity surges in Dublin that Christmas lights used to cause are a thing of the past.

That’s a good thing, Byrne says. His firm’s monthly ESB bill used to be about €3,000 but LED use has reduced it by 75 per cent.

Trends this year are towards traditional schemes. There’s lots of red and gold lighting with warm white strings of lights punctuated with cool white flashing lights for a contemporary alternative. The latest thing is to invest in a set of lights that can be programmed to any colour scheme you like so you can set it up for Christmas, opt for pink lights for Valentine’s, green lights for St Patrick’s Day and so on as you work your way through the calendar.

Byrne divides the world into two types: those who love Christmas and those who hate it. Thankfully the lovers outweigh the haters by a ratio of 3 to 2. “A lot of men sit in the loving Christmas camp, he says. Men of a certain vintage see it as an opportunity to gather the family together and express their love for their family through lights.” They also love coloured lights – something many of his female customers are less fond of.

Returning children are one of the key reasons customers go all out with big outdoor displays. “During the recession a lot of people pulled back on displays but this is the best yuletide we’ve had in years.”

Fantasy Lights will make signs to order, although it’s already too late for this season. If you want to emblazon your lawn with ‘Welcome Home Sean’ it will cost you more than €1,000.

Fantasylights.com

PANTO WAY OF LIFE

Claire Tighe is queen of the pantos. Together with a childhood friend Karl Harpur, an Irish actor based in LA, she writes and produces one of the festive season’s best kept secrets, the panto at The Helix, a production that has more than trebled its ticket sales since the team took over nine years ago.

This year it's Aladdin and it's a family affair. Her husband, Aidan acts in it and helps build the sets, her mother does costumes and she and her father sit on the board of directors of her company. She uses a room at her family home to store costumes and the sets are built in a shed in her father-in-law's back garden.

There’s panto banter at breakfast and they even discuss lines in bed.

“The key is to deliver a comedy that appeals to both adults and kids but isn’t crude,” she explains. It has to tickle both demographics’ funny bones.

The writing team work on Skype, each taking turns to write ideas with the other editing and they are always on the lookout for the next great thing. They send funny YouTube clips to each other for consideration and go to see shows.

Claire makes regular trips to London's theatres, sat in the seats for the recent production of Billy Elliot at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre and saw Matilda in New York. She also gets inspiration from other stage school productions.

In this year's show the "glorious Robbie Brady" will be referenced. So will stalwart TV show Britain's Got Talent. American politics might make a cameo as even the kids are riveted by the pantomime taking place across the pond in the presidential elections. "Donald Trump is far too easy to peg as the villain," she says. "I'm sure he'll be referenced but rather than a villain I see him as a gormless idiot. He's a joke – a pantomime president."

Glow sticks at the ready.

Thehelix.ie