THE YELLOWING newspapers are somewhere in the family files. They show me, age seven, decked out in Communion finery at the head of a procession through the streets of the Manchester neighbourhood where I was born.

Two little boys are dressed as pages, holding the ends of the satiny, gold embroidered train made by my mother. Chosen by lottery to be the First Communicant to crown Our Lady in our parish church, I was getting my 15 minutes - and I enjoyed every second of them.

The local evening paper featured this and many other processions from other parishes that day, for this was the 1950s, an era of Catholic triumphalism. We had The Faith, we flaunted it, and on our First Communion day we children certainly enjoyed it.

And nostalgia for the theatricalism of that big day has a lot to do with why collectively we cling to the OTT First Communion, in the teeth of increasingly desperate calls for us all to get some sense. Mammies like me, grannies like Teasy in Glen roe (who couldn't believe Biddy would buy a secondhand Communion dress for Denise), would feel a sense of loss if our children made their First Communion dressed in something sensible.

It's true that the Mediterranean excess of the Irish First Communion - the mini bride dress, the flowers in the hair, the gloves, the snowy white shoes, the silky bag, sometimes the parasol - has little to do with religion; that it's a bit of a mystery why a generation of feminists are eager to indulge their daughters' fantasy of dressing like the Little Princess.

But it truly is part of what we are, and it seems to me that instead of having the dreary annual debate about what's wrong with it - why there's really no need to dress up, why it's so often people who can least afford it who spend the most, blab blab - we should celebrate its good aspects, social as well as religious, and concentrate on realistic ways of cutting the cost.

Catholic Church authorities, schools and parents worry about the consumerist First Communion both because it can be frighteningly expensive - driving some families into the arms of moneylenders - and because matters material may obscure the spiritual significance of the day.

Brendan Roche, manager of the Government's MABS (Money Advice Bureau Service), knows families who spend up to £500: there's the child's outfit, which for little girls can cost from £80 up to £160; then the rest of the family decides it needs a new rigout; There's the official photograph, often a trip to the hairdresser, a meal out for the extended family.

There are rumours of sunbed sessions, and children being ferried by Shetland pony and trap to church. (I couldn't pin down this pony story, but Massey's quoted £175 for a horse and carriage and, to their credit, advised against it.) And Father Dan O'Connor, education secretary of the Dublin diocese, swears that it is possible, in Newry, to buy a First Communion tiara that lights up.

Father O'Connor is one of those who believes that the modern First Communion has got seriously out of hand: "When my mother, who's 84, made her First Communion, girls wore a simple white dress. The boys wore clean clothes and their Communion medal. This custom of dressing kids up like brides started in the 1940s, and took root in the 1950s."

SOME PARISHES and schools have tried to import the idea of the alb - a garment to be worn over the school uniform - from the continent, only a handful with success. According to Father O'Connor, "extreme pressure is put on schools by parents to have the whole dress up." He adds ruefully that in some schools, children were found wearing the alb over a frilly dress.

The thing is, as Sister Eileen Randles, head of the Catholic Primary School Managers' Association, says, "every parent deplores the excess - once their child's First Communion is over."

Fionnuala Kilfeather of the National Parents' Council (Primary) reckons that parents' concerns are split 50-50 between cost and fears that all the hype obscures the spiritual significance of the event. The most important thing, she believes, is that parents discuss what they want to happen in their school or parish.

One cost saving practice she recommends is for parents to organise a tea and sandwiches party in the school or parish hall after First Communion: this could take the place of the meal out at the same time as emphasising the community celebration.

Meanwhile, Church authorities and schools (and Father O'Connor insists on putting in a plug here for dedicated primary teachers who gave much more than they're paid for to prepare First Communion classes) work on teaching children the spiritual meaning of the day and involving parents in that work. Both he and Sister Eileen say it's right to celebrate an important day in the child's and family's life, but urge parents to tone it down to emphasise the spiritual.

They recommend too that parents and schools get children to give some of their First Communion money to an agreed charity.

Brendan Roche of MABS talks to schools and parents' groups about how to handle the expense. He advises parents to go to a Communion shop where you can buy everything, and start paying for it month by month from as early as September or October.

I'm not so sure that children would understand the spiritual significance of the day any better just because their parents spend less. In post war England, our dresses were mostly home made of simple material, veils made from lengths of nylon net. But for all we knew, they could have cost thousands, such was our excitement at the drama of it all.

The truth is, the Irish First Communion isn't truly just a religious ceremony, but an important social ritual, a community celebrating itself, extended families getting together, in this case, to make a fuss of their children. We do it at weddings, we still do it at wakes and funerals, and we enjoy doing it in style.

In some other countries, First Communions are now celebrated with correct post Vatican II restraint. But they don't have as much fun.