The Night Before Christmas Read online

  After Mrs Casey finished telling her story, we were silent for a while. I wondered why Dad had never told us about Uncle Barry. He had told us that his mother had died on Christmas Night and sometimes in the middle of all the excitement of Christmas Night he would sit smoking his pipe looking into the fire, and now after hearing Mrs Casey’s story I would know that the night had many memories for him.

  “I’m glad you told me that story,” I said.

  “Good,” she said, rising up off the chair. “Children should be told these things. Now we had better have a peep at this cake before himself is in on top of us.”

  Later, as I walked down the boreen in the dusk of the evening, I thought of what Mrs Casey had said and looked up at the sky to see if I could see a star falling. Mrs Casey was a spiritual woman and her faith was rooted deep in the earth and in the people around her, and what she had told me seemed to bring heaven and earth closer together. The people who had lived in our house down through the years belonged in our Christmas; her telling had brought them nearer, and I liked her belief that the gates of heaven were open on Christmas Night, though I had no desire to test her theory.

  Christmas Eve

  WHEN I OPENED my eyes the first thing I saw was the old fir tree just outside the window with a frosty shawl around her shoulders. Suddenly I knew that the long-awaited day was here at last; anticipation that had been simmering in my veins for days burst into flame with the realisation that the weeks of preparation were finally over and we were now on the threshold of Christmas. Simultaneous with the awareness of morning came a wave of euphoria flooding my mind. Before jumping out of bed I stretched to my full length under the warm quilt, letting the sheer delight penetrate every fibre of my being. A dart of excitement wiped the last traces of sleep out of my head. It was Christmas Eve at last: the essence of it was in the air, it was in the house, but most of all it was in my mind. It had built up gradually over the previous weeks since the night my mother had rounded us all up to pluck the Christmas geese.

  In the bed beside me my sister’s face was buried in the pillow and her long black hair streamed down over the heavy patchwork quilt that formed a bodyguard between us and the crippling cold of the bedroom. She was sound asleep and I lay beside her savouring the knowledge that Santa – who was as real to me as my old friend Bill – was packing his sleigh to begin his journey which later that night would bring him to me with the first doll that I could call my own. A new doll, not a patched-up hand-me-down from an older sister. This was going to be the best Christmas ever. I eased my toe out from under the quilt but withdrew it sharply when I felt the icy draught. The old quilt was so heavy that you had to lift it before you could turn beneath it, but it had a plus factor in that no chill pierced through; to come out from under it on a cold morning was like coming up out of a warm burrow. When I put my foot on the ice-cold lino on the floor, I almost fell over with the shock. I stood shivering in the arctic conditions, and because I did not want to suffer in silence, I shook my sister and breathed the magic word, “Santy”. It did not work, however, and she burrowed further down under the quilt until she became just a bump in the middle of the bed.

  I gathered my clothes in a bundle under my arm and sat myself down on the threadbare mat outside the bed. It was a little oasis that lessened the stinging chill of the hard cold floor. I pulled up my long black knitted stockings over my thin white legs, which reminded me of the bare branches of the winter trees, and they became the spindly black legs of my grandmother’s goat. When I had my lower half insulated, I eased off my long flannelette nightdress and started on my top half. As I donned the layers that my mother felt were sufficient protection against prevailing weather conditions I watched through the frosty patterns on the window-pane my mother, father, brother and older sisters come in from milking the cows to their breakfast. Their warm breath curled upwards in the air like the smoke from my father’s pipe.

  When I was dressed I sat and surveyed the room with satisfaction. It was tidier than it had been for many months because of the overhaul the whole house had got in preparation for Santa. Our eldest sister Frances, who had been in charge of the clean-up operation, had assured us that Santa was very generous to tidy children. We were not going to allow our usual clutter to curtail his giving spirit!

  After breakfast my sisters and I started to decorate the kitchen. The previous day, under the direction of Frances, we had scrubbed the súgán chairs and wooden tables and swirled buckets of water across the stone floor. We had cleaned the windows and whitewashed the hob and now the whole kitchen was ready to be decorated; the Christmas enthusiasm that had been suppressed for weeks broke forth as we set out to decorate every corner.

  My mother, however, was more concerned with practical matters and was busy filling the black pot over the fire with potatoes to be boiled for the stuffing. We had drawn several buckets of potatoes in from the potato pit the day before and washed them in an old tin bath under the spout at the end of the yard. They were now lined up in the lower room to see us over the Christmas period. While the potatoes were coming to the boil, my mother lifted the smoked ham down from the chimney and washed it with cold spring water that she had brought from the well. By the time the ham was washed, the potatoes were boiling, so she moved them sideways and the pot with the ham took centre stage.

  Then she went to the turf-house and brought in a long-legged, rigid goose. It was difficult to imagine that this had been one of the plump geese who had waddled so happily around the farmyard and swum up and down the little river below the meadow just a few months before. She was laid out on the kitchen table and my mother commenced dissecting operations on her. To run your hand along her chilly leg was to discover the real meaning of “goose pimples”. The first indignity she suffered was the removal of her wings and these were placed behind the bellows where the joints would dry out and season; they would then be ready for action as dust gatherers and cobweb collectors. An enamel plate was filled with methylated spirits and set alight and then the goose was moved slowly back and forth in the blue blaze to singe off her pen feathers. The singeing produced an acrid smell around the kitchen, so the window had to be opened to clear the air. The next thing the goose lost was her head and then her windpipe was yanked out. We stood around with our mouths open in horror watching all this mutilation take place but when her rear quarters were opened and multi-coloured organs were evicted we scattered. But my mother attended to this ritual with painstaking precision. The fat that lined the goose’s stomach was collected and put into a jar for future use in lubricating stiff joints and softening tough leather. Her yellow legs had boiling water poured over them until the skin fell off and these, together with her neck and gizzard and other repulsive-looking bits, were put in a saucepan to simmer by the fire and form the base for tomorrow’s gravy. Would I ever be able to forget where it came from?

  Having abandoned our mother to the monotonous job of removing the remainder of the pen feathers by hand, we went to the turf-house to bring in the big bundle of holly. Here the other two geese still hung and I gave them a wide berth. The holly was landed in the centre of the kitchen floor, where we carefully untied the foxy binder-twine that bound it together, easing our fingers gingerly between the glossy spikes that were hell-bent on scratching us. The released bundle stretched itself across the kitchen floor, its suppressed branches arched upwards and outwards and scattered red berries in all directions, turning the kitchen into a holly garden. We set to with enthusiasm, cracking off bits of different lengths and working it into every available corner. The fact that the ceiling had a timber cornice mould which wound all around the kitchen provided us with a ready furrow into which to poke our holly pieces, but sometimes before they were securely rooted in position a little shower of dry mortar and dust rained down upon the decorator. We stuck a holly branch through each hook hanging from the ceiling where they shared places with bits of “yalla” bacon. Behind the pictures was also a good holding place, and along the top of t
he kitchen press. Nobody called a halt to our free-flowing design and we did not consider the job finished until every scrap of holly had found a home. My grandmother had told us that an angel sat on top of every holly spike during the twelve days of Christmas, so we were determined to provide ample seating accommodation for visiting angels!

  We rushed through putting up the holly, but we took our time with decorating the Christmas tree. In our large farmhouse kitchen, around which the whole life of the house and farm revolved, were two timber tables which had to be scrubbed white every Saturday. The larger of the two was for family meals and the second acted as a stand for buckets of spring water and milk, but over Christmas these buckets found another stand and the table became the home of the Christmas tree. To describe ours as a tree was a bit of an exaggeration because it was actually a branch that my father, under pressure, cut for us. If he had been compelled actually to cut down one of his much loved trees, it would have turned us into Christmas orphans overnight. But he did usually concede a fine big pine branch, and this we placed on top of the table in a bucket of sand, where it stretched its dark green arms along the yellow walls; its main stem reached up beside the clock, whose brass pendulum swung back and forth behind the branches.

  The decorations consisted of balloons and the Christmas cards that had come from relations all over the world during the previous weeks, together with the pick of the best of previous years. There was a long debate as to whose favourite card should enjoy pride of place at the top, but whoever won the argument knew that their victory was short-lived as whatever card headed the pole would be quietly replaced several times during the following days, and often indeed within the hour. As the decorating fervour swept us along, we sang and we argued, and occasionally a stand-up fight brought proceedings to a halt until my mother stepped in to restore the peace. A serene person herself, she was forever telling us that a row never solved a problem, only made it worse, but her advice mainly fell on deaf ears.

  She brought the box containing the ceiling decorations out of the money trunk upstairs and we draped these long paper chains across the kitchen, attaching them to the ceiling with little tacks which we poked out of my father’s butter box. The ceiling was fairly low, so we could not let them dip down too far: after all, Uncle Andy was over six feet tall, so they could finish up like a halo around his head or tangled in my father’s cap. The partition around by the walls had a little shelf running along the top and here we ran the ivy; with the left-overs we draped the banister of the stairs. Despite our many arguments and power struggles we still hugely enjoyed smothering the kitchen with Christmas decorations and making it look totally different from its appearance during the rest of the year. At an enforced break for a makeshift meal we ate mashed potatoes from my mother’s stuffing pot and ling with a white sauce. I hated the look of the ling and the smell of it, but because I was hungry and there was no alternative, I swallowed it, though I kept my eyes closed.

  After we had all been fed my mother turned her attention to the stuffing. The steaming potatoes were allowed to cool slightly before peeling but could not be allowed to cool too much as they needed enough warmth to melt the big lump of yellow butter that streamed over them as they were put into a big green enamel dish that she always used for the stuffing. A large stale loaf had its insides slowly grated out with a fork and was blended through the potatoes together with sliced onions and her chosen herbs and spices. When it was all to her satisfaction she lined up the now pure white, washed and scrubbed goose beside the dish and slowly packed the stuffing in. As all the goose’s departments were filled up she took on a new appearance and it was easy to forget that she had once been a grass goose before being fattened up for this end as our prospective dinner. When she was packed to capacity she was stitched up front and back and the spare stuffing was put into a bowl and covered with greaseproof paper. She was then laid in state in the green dish with the bowl on her stuffed belly and carried to the chilly regions of the lower room to wait for Christmas morning. The ham had been lifted out of the pot of boiling water and transferred to the bastable over the fire where it slowly roasted and filled the kitchen with a tempting smell. But Christmas Eve was a meatless day – “a hungry day” as Dan called it – so there was no hope of a tasting session later on.

  With the goose out of the way, my mother turned her attention to the Christmas candle. There was no argument involved here because this was my mother’s domain and we all bowed to her right to do it her way, following her instructions without question. My father brought in the big yellow turnip with an odd purple bulge which he had lifted from the turnip pit and scrubbed in the water barrel on his way in. He put it, still dripping, on the deep window-sill and proceeded to scoop out a hole with his penknife. He fitted and refitted the big white two-pound Christmas candle until it was rock-solid in position, making sure that it couldn’t be overturned by his noisy brood whom he always considered capable of burning him out of house and home. With the candle standing pale and upright in its yellow bed, my mother wrapped a red, pleated paper skirt around the turnip. We had made the skirt the night before with crepe paper and straight pins and with much ripping and patching. Now my mother stuck the best of the red-berry holly into the turnip, where it curved upwards around the candle and fell out over the frilled skirt. The dark green holly and the bright red berries contrasted vividly with the tall white candle. Then she put holly all around the window-sill and shutters. We stood back, silenced by her serenity, and were impressed by the lovely effect she could achieve with the minimum of fuss.

  Then she brought what she called her “Christmas mottoes”, brightly coloured, unframed pictures, and hung them in their usual places. One depicted a fat Santa with an overflowing bag of toys and she placed it above the new oilcloth over the fireplace; another, of Mary and Joseph and the donkey, she put on the wall beside the oil lamp. Finally she positioned a little battered cardboard crib under the tree, and now we were ready for Santa.

  We waited for our old neighbour Bill to come down from his hilltop house to inspect our efforts and when he did we formed a guard of honour around him as he inspected our Christmas layout. Then my brother staggered in the door under the weight of the Christmas log. My mother whipped the bastable containing the ham off the pot hangers and we ran to the fireplace ahead of him and scooped the fire forward with the big iron tongs and shovel to make way for the log so that it would fit snugly up against the red bricks at the back. He rocked it back and forth until it reached ground level and there was nothing large beneath it to upset its balance. It was just the right length and the same height as the red bricks behind the grate and was thick enough to back the fire for days. Along the front of it we laid long black sods of turf and slowly the disturbed fire recovered itself and flames licked out between the sods and up the front of the log where the dry moss and green lichen crackled and curled and revealed the solid white trunk beneath. The care taken in choosing “Blockeen na Nollag” had been worthwhile.

  Then Bill sat with us beside the fire as we listened to Santa on the radio calling out in his rich, gravelly voice the names of all the boys and girls whom he was going to visit later that night. He was a wise Santa, because he called out long lists of Christian names only, so that somewhere along the line most children were included. When I heard my name called out I had no thought for any other Alice out there: that was my name he called out and later that night he was going to come down our chimney. When he had finished his lists and he announced that he was on his way from the North Pole, we went to the kitchen door and looked out over the distant Kerry hills; there in the fading light of the evening sky I was sure that I could see his sleigh in the gathering darkness on the horizon.

  Our Christmas Visitor

  WHEN DAN MADE his hasty departure after the threshing, having provoked a row with Bill, he told my father: “Boss, I’ll be back for Christmas if I’m not dead or in jail. I’ll have a roof over my head in either of those two place, but if they don’
t work out I’ll be back.” He never stayed with us very long because he soon got restless and wanted to be on the move. But he did not go quietly, because he did nothing quietly, so he provoked a row with anyone who was available and then he went off in a huff after demanding a clean shirt off my mother. She worried about him in case he did not look after himself properly and when he came to stay she always tried to fatten him up, but Nell told her she was wasting her time.

  “No fat,” Nell said, “would rest on that fella: he is too full of venom, it melts the fat off him.” There was no love lost between himself and Nell.

  But Dan and my mother got on well, even though they were a total contrast; she was easygoing and at peace with herself while Dan was like thorny wire and would fight with himself if there was no one else available. One day in a moment of appreciation he told her: “Missus, to live in this house you’d want to be a saint,” and then – because there was always a sting in the tail where Dan was concerned – he added: “but then there is very little difference between a saint and a fool.” Despite this pronouncement she always defended him when he succeeded in antagonising everybody else in the house.

  That Christmas night Bill pointed out to us the different heavenly bodies in the night sky and we all stood looking up, trying to see if there was a very bright star up there that could be the star of Christmas. As we stood gazing up in a circle around Bill we heard a rasping cough and Dan’s rough voice came out of the semi-darkness, cutting into our silent world.

  “What the hell are ye all doing out here, standing looking up to heaven like fools?” he demanded, and without giving us a chance to answer he continued in a voice loaded with sarcasm: “Bill, are you thinking of ascending? You’ve the wrong season you know. This is Christmas, not Easter.”