If you are the person in your house who is mostly in charge of Christmas, and if it’s all feeling a bit too much at the moment, then I am sorry for your troubles. My own troubles, regarding Christmas at least, are minimal. I started stockpiling gifts much earlier than usual, to try to avoid my usual last-minute-Mary Christmas Eve dash around certain Dublin shops – Om Diva, Designist, Article, Flying Tiger, Sostrene Grene and Anywhere That Sells Great Cheese or Chocolate. But, more importantly, this is the third year in a row I’ve managed to finagle my way into someone else’s festivities. It’s been game-changing on a lot of levels.
Being a cuckoo in someone else’s Christmas-dinner nest has alleviated a lot of the tinsel-coated anxiety. No despairing that the good cutlery/tableware/candles aren’t, in fact, good enough for the Christmas feast. No worrying about creating a giant Sunday dinner that has more elements than a periodic table. No Big Christmas Shop. (To be honest, I kind of miss the Big Christmas Shop. But I have a copy of The Gathering by Anne Enright on my shelf, so I can just read her fictional, definitive version of the Big Christmas Shop, which is almost as good as being there searching for the last jar of something I’d never buy any other time of the year – oh hello there, jar of lurid yellow piccalilli!)
Apologies for boasting, but I am largely stress-free, Christmas-dinner-wise. If, by contrast, you are finding yourself in a tizzy about all the shite before Christmas, I have two tips. The first is to do what I’ve done and find friends who love creating deliciously raucous Christmas dinners more than you do. Friends who say things like “The more the merrier!” and are not lying. It might be too late for this year, but after the glitter settles I recommend doing a little scoping exercise to find out who would like to share their Christmas table with your family next time.
I’ve managed to locate the perfect family for a shared Christmas. He is a trained chef and one of the funniest people I know. She is a wise, Zen woman with a loud, dirty laugh and onion layers I am still unpeeling. Their daughter is a cool teenager who, together with my teenagers, creates a Gen Z quiz for the adults, designed to expose our lack of knowledge of their lingo. Like, idk, you know, mid.
I spent years mourning the dismantling of certain family traditions from childhood Christmases – the Borzas bringing us all the chipper leftovers on Christmas Eve was obviously difficult to move on from – before discovering that brand new traditions can be just as powerful. For example, someone who shall not be named passed wind loudly during our joint festivities last year. The resulting hysterics caused by the noise (and potency) of said wind mean it is now reverentially referred to as the Fart That Saved Christmas.
The second tip is two words: Ronan Collins. At one point during the Recent Unpleasantness, a musical friend prescribed one hour of Ro a day as a cure for what was ailing me. I admit it took me a good while to come around, unlike the 232,000 committed fans of one of the most listened-to music radio show in the country. For many years I was a Ronan Collins Show refusenik. I did not think he was for me. It turned out Ronan Collins was for everybody. The day I started listening to his listener requests marking “roundy birthdays”, and his carefully curated playlist, I finally got it.
“It” is hard to define, but my musical friend does it brilliantly. He says that people in the music business talk about “ears” and that Ronan has extremely “cultured” ones. My friend respects the way he never lets petty ideas of genre get in the way. He pointed out that, as Collins is drummer as well as a DJ, his selections often have a “rhythmic spine” that keeps the show moving along.
Collins is famously a connoisseur of Irish music, from Butch Moore in the showband era right up to Fontaines DC. “Bridging the genres, spanning the generations, keeping everyone happy, this is quite the high-wire act,” my friend told me in a text message when I asked him to sum up Collins’s contribution over 43 years of his show. “To do it in that slot, sandwiched between talking heads, the news cycle and the doom scrolling was harder than it looks, especially during Covid, which I don’t recall him explicitly mentioning once. His only concession to it was a daily groover he called a Lockdown Loosener Upper, to encourage people to dance around the kitchen and get some exercise.
“I wouldn’t underestimate the catharsis that hour of music has meant to Irish people when we have been at a low ebb. Nor have I ever heard him engage in the idle celebrity gossip that can often be a lazy radio filler. With Ronan Collins it’s only ever about the music. He’s a class act.”
I’ve been listening religiously to Collins lately because in a couple of days he’s leaving his noon slot on RTÉ. For me this has been like discovering a new, amazing friend who shortly afterwards tells you he’s emigrating, the fecker. (He’s not really emigrating: you’ll be able to find him sporadically on RTÉ Radio 1 on bank holidays, with The Collins Collection).
So two tips. First, share the Christmas load with like-minded-buddies. Second, make the most of Ronan Collins’s last couple of days. His final show is on Friday, the day before Christmas Eve. It’s not a cure for absolutely everything that ails us. It won’t end the permacrisis of war, the cost-of-living crisis, domestic and international misogyny, homelessness and more. But it is an hour to savour songs and celebrate a man who has his own roundy birthday next year, a man who has done the State some serious service. From this Ró to another Ro, thank you for the music. And Merry Christmas, everyone.
The Collins Collection, on RTÉ Radio 1 at noon on January 1st and 2nd, will feature Ronan Collins performing with his own band, along with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Gavin James and Róisín Ó