As sure as Santa Claus will be spotted dropping down chimneys tonight, this is the time of year when complaints are heard that Christmas has become just too commercial. According to the seasonal grumblers, a festival once commemorated with innocent pleasure has become ensnared by mercantile interests. Christmas, they insist, is now simply another sordid sequence of consumerist transactions.
Well, if there is any truth in this notion, then the process began much earlier than is generally realised. Plentiful evidence of Christmas's long-term commercialism can be found in the pages of this newspaper indeed on the very front cover of The Irish Times published a century ago today. The issue of December 24th, 1901, featured an abundance of advertisements enticing customers to spend their money on seasonal gifts, and only the character of these items has changed.
Naturally, there are no references to Sony PlayStations, Harry Potter memorabilia or Barbie. But 100 years ago, children's clothing was considered an excellent Christmas present, with one retailer in Dublin offering boys' sailor suits in either tweed or serge at prices ranging from as low as two shillings and sixpence up to 25 shillings.
Obviously even then some gift-buyers were uncertain that they had made the right choice, so the same advertisement provides reassurance that sailor suits were "still a great favourite for small boys", although probably not as much as would have been a train set. And pity the same aforementioned small boy who on Christmas morning was presented with a "fancy suit" in velvet or silk plush; suddenly a tweed sailor outfit sounds rather appealing.
The ability to spend a substantial sum and still buy the wrong gift is obviously not new either. Hughes Bros of Dawson Street, for example, announce in their advertisement that "the most useful present for a lady's use is a sewing machine".
Useful, of course, ought never to be confused with desirable, but for centuries harassed spouses have muddled these two terms, leading to unhappy scenes on Christmas morning.
Another outlet, Millar & Beatty of Grafton Street, also offered "useful" Christmas presents such as saddlebag chairs, fire screens and fancy tables. The last of these would not only have been rather awkward to wrap tidily but also difficult to accept with any convincing show of appreciation. A fancy table: just what any of us would have always wanted.
If the opportunity for making mistakes has not changed, the places in which to make erroneous purchases are certainly different from a century ago. Where now is Chancellor & Son which could proudly boast that it was offering gold and silver watches "as sold in Dublin for 100 years"? Where T.R. Scott and its revolving bookcases, Mrs Nolan's stock of children's pelisses and frocks, and McCabe's, which promised customers a "gorgeous display" of turkeys, geese, capons "and every description of game"? All gone.
It is, therefore, a relief to discover in the century-old copy of this newspaper one brand associated with Christmas both then and now: Lemon's Sweets. Here is the company's advertisement declaring that its confections are sure not just to make a home happy, but even more importantly "will not make the family ill".
As if to underline this point, a report inside the paper announces that the Countess Cadogan, wife of the Lord Lieutenant, had visited Lemon & Co's outlet in Lower Sackville Street the day before and, accompanied by her friends, had "purchased an assortment of fancy boxes of sweets".
As photographs from Dublin Airport show, we still like to know who has arrived or left the country, even if passenger lists of the D·n Laoghaire ferry - or the Kingstown Royal Mail Steamer as it then was - are no longer carried in full. Among those back here in time for Christmas in 1901 were the Countess of Belmore, Viscount Castlerosse and the Hon G. Walsh, along with the euphoniously-named Tissington Tatlow jnr.
Also then as now, this newspaper carried other seasonal recommendations, such as the most notable books published during the previous year, some of which might make suitable presents. The paper's anonymous correspondent evidently thought little of 1901's literary efforts, declaring that "a candid review of the world of letters in the year now closing in leads to the conclusion that at this moment the curve is rather downward than upward". Few works met with approval, with Rudyard Kipling's Kim considered "too kaleidoscopic to be quite satisfactory". At least that book is still remembered, unlike the writer's first choice, The Fiery Dawn by Miss Mary Coleridge, which is described as appealing to "readers who care for the literature of intelligence, not merely for the literature of distraction".
Among Irish works published in 1901, by the way, this newspaper was especially enthusiastic about Miss Jane Barlow's From the Land of the Shamrock; seemingly, "the gem of the book is the second story, 'Dinny of the Dans' which, in its own way, touches perfection." So, when looking for a stocking filler, it may be worthwhile trying a secondhand bookshop for the chance of finding anything by Miss Barlow.
But, lest it seem that our forbears were even more preoccupied than we are with selfish enjoyment, the same copy of The Irish Times also provides plenty of evidence that Christmas brought out the national spirit of philanthropy.
Just as many of the old retailers have long gone, so too have some of our charities. The Irish Peasantry Society, for example, no longer survives, nor does Mrs Power-Lalor's Appeal for providing "comfortable dinners this Christmas". But the paper of December 24th contained a large advertisement looking for support for the work of the Society of St Vincent de Paul, couched in terms remarkably similar to those used by the same organisation today.
In order to provide food and fuel to those in want, the society asked well-intentioned readers to give whatever assistance they could. Over the course of 100 years, it seems both the commercial and the charitable sides of an Irish Christmas have scarcely changed at all.
Robert O'Byrne is an Irish Times journalist