Mrs Brown’s Boys now dominates the Christmas TV entertainment schedule. I grew up in more innocent times. In the early 1970s, the humorous stories of the Kerry shanachaí Eamon Kelly were a staple of Yuletide fare on TV and radio.
One of his stories was of a Kerry farmer who travelled by pony and trap to Cahirciveen on Christmas Eve. After completing his shopping he adjourned to the pub. As he did not want his relatives in the town to know he was there, he perched himself in the snug, the small room that publicans provided for those who wanted to drink privately.
Having drunk not wisely but too well, he set off for home, stopping at the impressive Daniel O’Connell Memorial Church for Confession. There was a big crowd awaiting absolution. By the time it was his turn to enter the Confession box, he felt drowsy. In the box he fell asleep, as the priest detained the penitent on the other side of the curtain for a long time
Started by the eventful pulling back of the curtain, confused by where he was, the man blurted out: “The same again, and turn on the lights in the snug.”
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To paraphrase the Russian novelist Boris Pasternak, humanity lived in a dark cul-de-sac before the birth of Jesus. The word of God was made flesh and lived amongst us
Many people under 30 may need a glossary to understand this story. The numbers attending Confession in most Irish parishes has dwindled to a trickle and the architecture of modern pubs does not include a snug.
For those of us of the Christian persuasion, Christmas is an opportunity to deepen our appreciation of God’s gift to us and to celebrate our common heritage with family and friends. To paraphrase the Russian novelist Boris Pasternak, humanity lived in a dark cul-de-sac before the birth of Jesus. The word of God was made flesh and lived amongst us.
[ Thinking Anew: Our anywhere and everywhere GodOpens in new window ]
My favourite time of Christmas is late on Christmas Eve before Midnight Mass. Looking out from my window on Blacksod Bay, the landscape seems touched by the transcendent. The frantic shopping is over. The feasting has not yet begun. It seems to me that the natural and spiritual worlds are in harmony. Awe is in the air.
As the Celtic monks knew, there are places and times when the distance between heaven and earth collapses and we can discern whispers of the divine.
John Montague, in his poem Christmas Morning, beautifully captures this kind of moment. He writes of people, “grouped in the warmth cloud of their breath” travelling to a “grey country chapel” where a “gas lamp hisses/ To light the crib/ Under the cross beams/ damp flaked message/ Gloria in Excelsis.”
Even non-believers can be touched by the sacred atmosphere. Thomas Hardy in his poem, The Oxen, found himself contemplating the Nativity on Christmas Eve “hoping it might be so”. It is a fundamental tenet of Christianity that Jesus Christ came into our world to bind up hearts that are broken. Believers are challenged to express their faith in active concern for the vulnerable, the poor and the rejected.
There will be symbolic empty chairs at many Christmas tables. As Paul Durcan acutely observed, Christmas can be the feast of ‘St Loneliness’
Christmas is an opportunity to show solidarity with those who find it impossible to join in the merriment of the season, those for whom the breezy jollity of the Christmas songs are an affront to their anguish; those who are haunted by terminal illness; those for whom 2023 was a cauldron of painful memories; the homeless, who experience the contemporary reality of there being no room at the inn; prisoners and their families.
Death has been an unwelcome visitor in many homes. There will be symbolic empty chairs at many Christmas tables. As Paul Durcan acutely observed, Christmas can be the feast of “St Loneliness”.
Reflecting on the theme of solidarity, I am reminded of an episode in Frank O’Connor’s moving memoir, An Only Child, where he recalls a childhood visit to a crib in a Cork convent. Amazed that the baby Jesus has no toys, he asked the nun why this was so. She replied that Jesus’s mother was too poor to afford them. That settled it for Frank.
[ Thinking anew: Bringing home the message of ChristmasOpens in new window ]
He gave the toy engine he had received from Santa to the child in the crib. He recalled the tearful feeling of “reckless generosity with which I left him there in the nightly darkness of the chapel, clutching my toy engine to his chest.”
Children have a way of getting directly to the heart of the matter. If there was more “reckless generosity” in our world, the Christian vision of love, justice and peace would be closer to fulfilment.
Fr Kevin Hegarty ministers in the parish of Kilmore-Erris, Co Mayo