A changing Ireland brings changing attitudes to Christmas. Kathy Sheridanasks people, from seven to 77, how they plan to celebrate this year.
Under-10s
Aifo Ebelegh (aged seven), Ryan O'Hara (nine), Mason Russell (eight), Danika Rock (eight) and Amy Hanney (seven), pupils at Rutland Street National School, Dublin
Mason has no doubts about Santy's existence, but knows one chap who has. "A cousin. Name is Deano. He thinks his Ma has the presents in the bedroom. Last year he didn't get any toys and this year he mightn't either," he adds morosely. The room heaves with bemusement at Deano's wrongheadedness.
Indeed, Mason himself has not been without doubts. "One year when I was two or four, I didn't believe. Well, I did believe and I didn't. I didn't know what to believe." That year, he claims, he got a Barbie doll and a bag of coal, but bears no grudge.
Ryan, too, had a brief crisis of faith. "I didn't believe when I was younger but then I found out because I heard a noise coming down the chimney and I went 'Yeow!' The fire was lighting. And when I put out the mince pie, there was a little bit of white hair in it."
Before Aifo left Nigeria this year, he had had only one visit from Santa. "A toy from Las Vegas. Those circle things that you hang on the wall and you have the three arrows and you shoot them". "Darts. Darts," explains Mason. Aifo saw a Santa in Dublin but knew he wasn't real.
"He was wearing these type of shoes," he says, pointing to his own black trainers. "Yeah, Santy wears shoes that go up," scoffs Ryan, indicating pointy toes.
Did you know that you can get Santy shoes and Rudolph food in Dunnes? And special Santy key cards (yours for a euro) that allow him to open all doors? Amy will leave hers on the mantelpiece. Mason will stick his in a mince pie and will be hiding the special food for Rudolph inside a carrot.
A new outfit for the three days of Christmas is de rigueur, plus special pyjamas. Danika's will have Santy on them, and another pair with reindeer for the next day. "For Christmas Day," she adds politely, "I have a furry pink coat, pink boots, pink tights, a pink skirt and a pink hat, and for the day after I've got a pink and grey tracksuit."
So what is Christmas all about? It's because Jesus likes to celebrate his birthday with children, they chorus. "It's Jesus's birthday and Jesus likes to celebrate birthdays, make the children happy and all. Santy, like Jesus, was a worker and Jesus asked Santy, 'will you go out and give all the children toys?'" Well, Santy is Jesus's friend so he couldn't refuse really, is the logic.
After a serious discussion about Santy expectations (Freddi Fish and Destroy all Humans 2 are prominent), we step out with Miss Adams for the children's Mass in the nearby church, where the twinning arrangement with the Greystones Church of Ireland co-ed school comes together in a service that leaves adults smiling fiercely through proud tears. At the offertory, pupils from both schools solemnly bring hampers (for which the children donated all their own money) to the altar for distribution to the poor.
Meanwhile, outside the church gate, half a dozen gardaí have mounted a checkpoint on the street, sub-machine guns cocked.
Twentysomethings
Alan Murrin (22), from Killybegs, Co Donegal, a final-year English student at Trinity College
When Alan Murrin returns to Killybegs for a break, he follows the classic (rather aggravating) student model: "Go home to nice, warm house, good food, digital television, lie on the couch, don't get out of bed till three o'clock in the afternoon, then return to Dublin fully recuperated." But Christmas is different.
"Christmas is a break from college and a time to get together with my family, a time for seeing people you wouldn't normally see at other times of the year." Unlike many of his elders, he actually means it.
One morning last week, he was taking the train to Tipperary on a day trip, armed with money gifts for his eight- and 12-year-old nieces: "I haven't seen them since Easter." Two days later, he would head for Co Donegal, where his mother, Betty, will have made "a really big effort with the house - so clean, all lit up" and where five-year-old Emlyn, Alan's nephew and Betty and Joey Murrin's first grandson, reigns over all.
"Christmas time is all about children. In the church at home, there's a special children's Mass that they've been practising for at school. I think if you're that age, it's really lovely, there's something magical about the whole religious experience. But it kind of wears off."
It did in Alan's case. "Christmas, for me, is definitely not about religion." He's atheist now, although he was inspired to make the effort to go to Mass last year.
"I don't know what kind of fit I woke with last Christmas morning, but I thought, 'sure I'll go to this anyway, it's been a while, see if it's changed'. But it was the same as ever."
The difference between city and country, he says, is that when you go home at Christmas, "you see faces you haven't seen for years. In a small town like Killybegs, population 3,000, you're returning to a place where everyone really knows each other's face, if not each other's name, and you know people of different generations, which might not happen in a city. Everyone is around and they all go out on Christmas Eve. I'll go out with a few friends I still know who are in college in Dublin like me and are home for Christmas.
"But going out in Killybegs wouldn't be a big part of Christmas for me. I almost try to get in my nights out beforehand, have my good times stored up so I can go home and just relax. We'll visit my brothers, I'll watch more television than I intend to and will read lots of books, hopefully.
"And, oh yeah, go for a walk on the beach."
He sounds ambivalent. Does he enjoy it?
"I do to a certain extent. Then I get bored. I'm looking forward to it this year because I haven't been home in so long. And I'm definitely looking forward to getting out of Dublin. People go crazy at this time of year - in shops they lose all sense of manners, shouting at shop assistants . . . There are certain times when I even don't want to go into town at night because it's going to be carnage. So no, for a little while, I'm not going to miss the city at all."
Thirtysomethings
David (36) and Amy (33) Millar, parents of Abbie (two) and Harvey (17 months)
For David and Amy Millar, this Christmas marks a new era. "Christmas used to be a sequence of parties. But this is the first real Christmas where Abbie understands about Santa," says David. "Now it's much more about building atmosphere."
The build-up included a trip from their home in Co Meath to see Santa on Doagh Island, in Co Donegal (you have to pass a real pub called the North Pole to get there), where cottages in an old Famine village have found new life as Santa's house, post office and toy factory and provide twinkling "homes" for his elves.
"It was very uncommercialised and lovely," says Amy. Before the excitement triggered by Santa getting stuck in a chimney, and the presents, the Chief Elf, accompanied by a real live reindeer and donkey, reminded his audience about where it all began, with the Nativity.
This is noted with approval by the Millars, despite their admission to being once-a-year Mass-goers. "If we didn't get Mass in, it wouldn't be Christmas. We even have Santa at the local Mass here in Mornington. It keeps the kids fairly contained when they know that Santa is due to appear."
Amid the stylish decorations and lights, and Gran's old glass baubles on the tree, the crib is a feature in the Millar home.
"We tell them the stories of Christmas, we discuss the Nativity. And we like singing Christmas carols. That can happen any time." The thing about the Millars is they are the spirit of Christmas. They come from families - Amy from Co Dublin and Dave from South Shields in the north of England - where numbers, participation and enthusiasm are expected.
"We never had Christmas with just the two of us, thank God," says Amy. "That wouldn't be our kind of Christmas. We need the noise. Even when I was - oh - 29, my three brothers and myself, with David here bringing up the rear, were still meeting on the stairs at 8am on Christmas morning and you'd creep down in order of your place in the family."
"And that's before any drink was taken," interjects David.
"And we'd go downstairs," adds Amy, "and open the presents. In our house, Santa left presents on a particular chair for each of us. We still do it. My mum and younger brother will be here this year so we'll have the same creeping down."
Their gifts reflect thought and a pause in the madness. Amy, a podiatrist at Rush Chiropody Clinic, and her four close friends, for example, have decided not to exchange presents but to spend a girlie day together in a friend's house in Tullamore. "We never seem to have time and this is about giving time. That's our present to one another. Christmas can be commercialised if you let it be, but it's not obligatory."
After a big fry-up "to line the stomachs", there will be visiting. Her mother and two of her friends take it in turns each year to host the visit. Afterwards, family members take it in turns to cook dinner; this year it will be the brother in Bettystown (Stephen and Sandra), with the Millars bringing the sherry trifle and Mum the spiced beef.
And afterwards, collapse in front of the TV? "Ah no. We wouldn't be into watching television at all. We get out the board games. We get a new one every year."
This year, it's a pub quiz in a box, which comes complete with cans of beer and crisps and a CD with pub background noises.
Fortysomethings
Julie Byrne (49), from Celbridge, Co Kildare, a clinical nurse manager at a health board hospital
Christmas has provided some of the high points of Julie Byrne's life. She got engaged to Chris in Christmas 1982 and brought their first-born daughter, Siobhan, home from the maternity hospital on a snowy Christmas Day in 1984.
"I remember driving home with my husband through the snow, and sitting in my mother's kitchen, breastfeeding my baby while Mama was basting the turkey, and suddenly being conscious of this feeling of pure and utter happiness."
With the arrival of Sheila, Siobhan's sibling, the Byrne Christmases were all about family and quiet ritual. Chris, a Wexford man and gifted musician and arranger, directed the children's choir at St Patrick's Church in Celbridge, from which RTÉ twice broadcast Christmas Mass.
"We were never people who went to the pub. It was a time to be with the children and each other. My mother was nearly always with us for Christmas, Chris's sister would come to stay for a few days and we had Siobhan's birthday. I could never plan too much because you could never be sure whether you were working or not. So Christmas Day was a gentle day".
When Chris died on a sunny June morning in 2002 after a short illness, their world turned.
"Christmas is all about birth and renewal and we had just experienced a death that had simply devastated us; I just couldn't marry the two. We weren't able to cope. It was like everybody in the world was celebrating and we weren't invited. Even though everybody was really very kind, we felt that we were ruining their Christmas just by being there."
For that first Christmas, Julie, Siobhan and Sheila escaped to the Slovenian Alps, to a quiet, lakeside village surrounded by trees with a little church up on the hill. As they walked through the snow-hushed streets up to midnight Mass, they could hear the choir singing Silent Night. "We cried all the way up. We cried a lot but we weren't making anyone uncomfortable. No one knew us, we could feel what we wanted to feel. That was a great freedom."
The following year, Julie lost her mother.
"That year, the two girls and I had a pyjama day at home. We became quite good at telling people that we needed our space. There were now two empty spaces and we didn't want to sit round a table."
Five years on, she says they are "definitely back to being able to take part in it all. But I'd have a different view of it now. I would be very conscious that there are an awful lot of people experiencing an alternative Christmas, people from other countries working here and without their families, people who are separated, divorced, bereaved. And I know from my nursing years that it's time when a lot of women turn up in hospital battered and children sick. I think in Ireland, Christmases are a bit loud and noisy, so the thing is to cope as best as you can and not pretend, and to know that it's okay to run away if you have to."
This year, the Byrnes will be hosting a big family get-together for about 20 on Christmas Eve.
"But on Christmas Day, we'll be on our own - we won't exactly be in pyjamas but we won't be sitting round a table. No one will ever fill that space and I'd never want anyone to fill it. That's Chris's space. But I'm very hopeful; I'm very happy. And wasn't I lucky to have him for 21 years?"
Over-65s
Des (77) and Phil Ryan, farmer and teacher in Limerick
In their comfortable, old farmhouse, filled with the heady scents, rich colours and candle-lit hospitality of an old Irish Christmas, Des and Phil Ryan recall their childhood in the 1930s and 1940s. If you were good, Santa might leave you a Jew's Harp (pronounced "joozurp" in Des's east Limerick lingo) and, if you were very good, a tin whistle, with maybe an orange, a banana, a few Peggy's Legs and some Bull's Eyes, all delivered in your own everyday stocking.
Phil remembers no huge distinction between rich and poor in her home village of Glin. Christmas trees were a rarity for everyone; there was only holly for decoration, and no big outings to the city. Nor were there images of Santa doing the rounds, because there was no television; "you conjured it all up in your imagination." That poverty of imagination and creativity in modern children's lives is a major theme.
"I asked a grandchild what he wanted for Christmas and he said he wanted a DVD," she says thoughtfully. "Then he checked it on the computer and found that it hasn't even been issued yet. So smart are the young now that they know what they want before it's even available."
Religion played a major role in those long-ago Christmases. On Christmas Eve, the entire parish went to confession, the numbers inflated by the emigrants' return from England. The crib was central to the celebrations and remains so in the Ryan home.
Every night, families gathered round it to recite a traditional prayer: "Hail and blessed be the hour and moment/On which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary . . ." Phil says with quiet satisfaction that she overheard a family member enact the same ritual earlier on the day we met.
Back in east Limerick, after dinner in the "upstairs parlour", a room used once a year, and heated with a massive tree trunk from the farm, Des's father might have had a "medium" (somewhat bigger than half a pint) of stout and sung Slievenamon, while his mother played the piano. Ghost stories were also an important element in the entertainment. "You'd be all around the fire, maybe a candle lighting the room, and a fella would come in and frighten the livin' life out of you telling ghost stories."
Later on as teenagers in Glin, Phil and her friends, fired up by the mobile cinema and the likes of Anew McMaster taking his theatre around the country, enlivened the season by enacting their own plays and concerts. After borrowing the curtains and tablecloths for costumes and a makeshift stage and dolling themselves up with lipstick from the local chemists, the little troupe would also borrow the local school, and ad-lib their way through such self-penned epics as Goodbye Hawaii for the delectation of the village.
"It was very innocent fun and full of spontaneity," says Phil.
Des laughs nostalgically, remembering other scenes from another time: "Ah, the fun was unbelievable. Around Christmas, relations from the city would come out and the dancing would lift the roof off the house."
And always on Christmas night, in the relaxed hours after dinner, Phil's mother would return to the church and stay for as long as four hours.
To be sure, they have their reservations about "the indulgence and lack of creativity and the non-spontaneous fun" in the modern Christmas, but this year Des and Phil Ryan's home will sing as always with their energy, generosity and laughter, a magnet for their offspring and grandchildren. "I see my grandchildren and know what I have to do," says Phil. "When all is said and done, I've to get out the DVD machine and fix it up for the Christmas. We have to adjust."