January: Fairytale of New York
As the year starts in high hopes it's still morning in America, especially for a pair of young romantics on the cold but exciting streets of Manhattan. She's a tender 68-year-old, wide-eyed at the city's cars big as bars and rivers of gold (most of them flowing into her election-campaign fund). He's a septuagenarian kid on a winning streak. "Got on a lucky one, came in 18 to one," he sings, apparently predicting the result of the election 11 months later. In an ominous note, backing harmonies are provided by the "NYPD choir", a fictional entity invented by The Pogues. Sure enough the harmony quickly disappears, and, as the couple's relationship degenerates in later verses, they are soon calling each other scumbag, maggot and worse.
February: In the Bleak Midwinter
Up the creek midwinter, more like, after another fairy tale goes wrong and leaves Ireland politically rudderless. Playing the role of Cinderenda in the Dáil pantomime, Enda Kenny had seemed certain of winning the electorate's hand for a historic second term. Then the clock struck midnight, and his campaign mantra of "keep the recovery going" was exposed as the giant hollowed-out pumpkin that it really was. With both main parties left a glass slipper short of a majority, the country is condemned to months of slippery people trying it on (in every sense).
March: O Little Town of Bethlehem
After Donald Trump wins big in the Republicans' Super Tuesday primaries, apocalyptic news columnists report the year's first sighting of a rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born. This soon becomes a stampede, as a series of disturbing events unfolds during the spring. First things fall apart (April), next the centre cannot hold (May) and then mere anarchy has been loosed upon the world (June). Desperate Israeli veterinary officials impose a strict cordon around Bethlehem, to no avail.
April: Little Drummer Boy
That's the David Bowie and Bing Crosby version. Rumours that an intergenerational supergroup is being formed in heaven are further fuelled when a recording session involving Bowie, Crosby, Keith Moon and many others is joined at the last minute by Prince. Ushering him through a cordon of paparazzi at the Pearly Gates, St Peter refuses to comment on speculation that Leonard Cohen may also be joining soon, a rumour started by Cohen himself. When a reporter asks if there are any plans to sign "Bob Dylan" a passing Terry Wogan quips, "No, you have to be able to sing to get in here." But St Peter then comments cryptically that Dylan will be making the news for a different reason before before before the year's end. He adds: "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
May: I Saw Three Ships (Come Sailing In)
The Naval Service vessel LE Róisín picks up nearly 300 migrants off the coast of Libya, as another busy and dangerous summer in the Mediterranean begins. Irish ships, including the James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, will rescue thousands during the months ahead. Back at home, meanwhile, the only marine dramas are metaphorical. After two months at sea Enda Kenny finally makes it back into port as a second-term Taoiseach. His newly refitted Ship of State, which looks a bit like The Irish Rover, is then relaunched on May 6th. Despite leaks, mutinies and the constant threat of icebergs formed by the temporary freezing of Irish Water, it goes on to surprise everybody by staying afloat until Christmas.
June: Here We Come A-Wassailing
This was not one of the songs sung by the thousands of Irish soccer supporters who travelled to France for Euro 2016. But, reviving an English Christmas tradition out of season, they wassail nonstop for two weeks, bringing peace and goodwill to all men (and many women), especially French bar owners. As usual, the soccer is incidental, although both Irish teams have good results. In the real competition, meanwhile, fans of the Republic and Northern Ireland top their groups for having the craic. They then meet each other in the final, hosted by the mayor of Paris, who declares the overall result a draw and gives them all medals.
July: Once in Royal David's City
In the the original of this carol a man "comes down to earth from heaven" to save the world. In this version a different man (called David) follows a broadly similar trajectory but without the happy ending, after gambling on an in-out Brexit referendum that goes wrong. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove play the ox and ass, especially after they end up on the winning side and it emerges that they have no idea what to do. Everybody then waits for the Three Wise Men to turn up, hoping that they'll have a plan. When they don't arrive the wise-man vacuum is filled by a wise woman – or at any rate a woman who can deliver gnomic statements such as "Brexit means Brexit" with a straight face.
August: God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
Or "I arrest ye, merry gentlemen" as (roughly translated) a Brazilian policeman says to Pat Hickey and Kevin Mallon. Either way, the result is a period of enforced repose for both men, thanks to their alleged misdemeanours in one of the Olympics' lesser-known gymnastic events: freestyle ticketing. Originally scheduled to return to Dublin at the end of the games, Hickey is instead reduced to hoping that, like Chris Rea, he might be driving home for Christmas, eventually. But this is not the only controversy of the games, as Russia takes the Olympian motto of Faster, Higher, Stronger and applies it to the pursuit of excellence in doping, breaking all records. A few of the boxing judges seem to be on something, too.
September: Blue Christmas
Playing in the traditional Yuletide colours of green and red, Mayo again enter the spirit of the season early by presenting Dublin with two gift-wrapped own goals in the All-Ireland football final. Despite this they fight back heroically to earn a replay. This leads both of the county's remaining optimists to suspect that the end of the infamous 65-year "curse" is at last imminent. Instead, after the replay, the Sam Maguire Cup is bedecked yet again in Dublin ribbons and Mayo are left singing along with Elvis: "I'll have a blue Christmas without you."
October: Fairytale of New York (reprise)
After the scumbag-maggot-cheap-lousy- faggot exchanges of the televised debates, the presidential election seems to have taken a decisive turn when Donald Trump unwittingly reveals one of his more successful seduction techniques as "Grab 'em by the p***y." Supporters of both candidates express shock and disgust, but the Democrats at least have the consolation that the race is now over. After all, in a puritanical country where The Pogues' classic Christmas song still has to be bleeped on radio, to avoid offending sensitive listeners with the word "faggot", a candidate who boasts of seizing strangers' genitalia is surely unelectable.
November: Adeste Fidel(es)
Having survived more than 600 assassination attempts, Fidel Castro pulls off the ultimate act of defiance against the CIA by dying peacefully of old age. Global reaction is mixed. Many decry his abuses of human rights. Romantics prefer to emphasise his positive achievements, such as preventing Michael Corleone from making a bad property investment in The Godfather Part II. Elsewhere, in a development that makes 1950s Mafia men blush, Donald Trump survives his p***y gaffe to win the White House. It's not all bad news in the US, though: Chicago hosts the first nativity play of the season, in which a St Joseph (second name Schmidt) presides over the birth of a rugby messiah, also called Joe(y). The latter ends November with a played-two, won-two record against the All Blacks and Australia. Religions have been founded on smaller miracles.
December: It's a Wonderful Life overture
In a 2016 remake of Frank Capra's classic, Barack Obama plays George Bailey, who sees his life's work in ruins and is threatening to jump off a bridge. An angel is sent from heaven to save him, which he does by the usual means of first reminding him of all the good things he has done and then presenting a picture of how the world would be if he had never lived. But when Obama points out that the latter scenario looks exactly like the United States under Donald Trump the angel is stumped. "Fair point!" he admits. Then a bell rings somewhere – the angel's pager, telling him to get back to heaven immediately. "It's hell up there at the moment," he explains to Obama. "Big delays at the celebrity registration centre. And now AA Gill just arrived and he's threatening a bad review." Before departing, the angel has the outgoing president arrested for his own safety. Already downcast, Obama spends Christmas Eve in the drunk tank, listening to a fellow detainee singing The Rare Old Mountain Dew, over and over, badly.
