Culture

In a Word . . . Christmas

Patsy McGarry's face
Patsy McGarry
Sat Dec 23 2017 - 00:00

It's that time of year when, for some of us, "the toils of the day will be all charmed away/In our little grey home in the west." Though it's not "little". Or "grey". Or an "it". Or even just "a" home. So many to visit.

What we are talking about here is place, the local. Which is all.

It is that time of year when our far-flung diaspora return from around the world to celebrate hearth, family, community.

My own family are back from London, Brussels, Sydney, and Philadelphia. ('Scuse meee . . . aah-hem?) Oh, yes, and of course . . . Dublin!

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It is the time of year when we are most likely to meet people on home visits. They may be back again in summer but so spread out over June, July, August, it can be hit or miss whether we meet.

Today, the day before Christmas Eve, can be frantic, not least if you’re a last minuter like me with all to do at once. Not least if you hate, detest, despise shopping as I do. But, tomorrow, it will be worth it all as we go family house to family house and my sister gets mad that we are late getting to her gang again.

And we will promise that next year it’ll be different and we’ll be better and be there earlier and that it’s all my brother’s fault anyway because he’s never on time and we had to wait for him again but that if it happens next year we’ll leave without him and so we avoid a scary row before bedtime that would jar with the spirit of the season even before Santy arrives. Again. Whew!

Said brother also insists that I spent an entire Christmas at home one year without seeing daylight for 14 days in succession. Such slander! As if?

It was 10 days and due, simply, to the nights being particularly long that year with so many home-comers to meet in such little time.

Dear reader, wherever you might be reading this on the day before Christmas Eve, let me wish you and those dearest to you a happy one, a merry one, and all the traditional joys that make this season the sweetest of the year.

Christmas from Old English Cristes mæsse. "Christ" plus "mass" from the Latin missa, meaning "dismissal". Thought to be related to concluding words at Mass "Ite, missa est". Written as one word from 14th century.