It is not just the season of festive cheer and holly which has got its fangs around our tonsils; greater woes altogether have their incisors on our jugulars, not the least being the warehouse of Brain-Damaged Undead which annually unleashes its residents on the city of Dublin disguised as Christmas shoppers. The BDU are everywhere; but alas, for the most part, they resemble perfectly ordinary people. They don't drop dead with the rising sun, they are visible in mirrors, and they don't recoil from garlic.
The only sure way to distinguish them from real human beings - by which I mean you, gentle readers - is by their behaviour. The BDU method of crossing a road is to turn the face away from the oncoming traffic and walk in front of it, usually deep in conversation with other BDUs.
It doesn't matter how fast the traffic is moving. BDUs don't mind, in part because of their stupidity. Aside from Aosdana, which reaches giddy heights of cretinism way beyond the imaginations of most of us, BDUs are the most imbecilic group of humans in Europe. But it is also in part their undeadness. They are unkillable. Many a time I have unravelled a BDU from the spokes of my bicycle, convinced that I had a corpse in mangled spool-form on my hands, only for the corpse to unreel itself and walk away, none the worse for its ordeal.
Christmas robins
BDUs are not the only thing to beware of this Christmastide. There are also those untraceable legions who drop you Christmas cards with robins on the front and winsome greeting within (Season's Greetings and a Happy New Year!) and a fluting assurance that we really must see more of one another in the coming twelvemonth, much love, Mary.
Just that. Just Mary. As the name Mary were the female equivalent of Arbuthnot or Plantaganet. And not a clue who this Mary is or was - cousin, lover, friend, business associate, whatever. Open next card. Robin on front. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Inside, the scribbled words: Don't be such a stranger in '98! Love, Mary.
Another fahqing Mary! I don't fahqing believe it! Throw card aside. Open next card. Robin on front. Heart sinks. With trembling fingers open envelope and look inside. Your eye catches just the bottom line: "Love, Mary." Aaaaaarrrrggghhhh. With palsied hands lift next envelope. Open it. Robin on the front . . .
But it's not the BDUs or bloody Marys that we should really be dreading this Christmas. It is the BDS, the bloody dreadful singers, we should go armed against. God organised the world so that every Catholic Church has one really awful singer, usually a teenage female with acne and a guitar, who will interrupt midnight Mass with some yuletide dirge, which goes: Strum, strum, strum, The Angel Gabriel to Mary came, strum strum strum, Most highly favoured lady, strum strum strum. Grim grim grim.
Dumb gratitude
Protestants never have these horrors inflicted on them. Never. Maybe the papes get them because papes generally speaking can't sing for toffee, and in dumb gratitude will accept fat Immaculata's kind offer to sing Most Highly Favoured Lady during the Offertory, strum strum strum.
For Catholic congregational singing is pathetic. An entire cathedral of Catholics can normally manage nothing better than the dying croak of a laryngitic goose with its neck in a mangle. On the other hand, take a couple of Prods, tell them to sing, and you'll get a noise like the Morman Tabernacle Choir on E. Don't ask me why; ask Martin Luther. Ask the Pope. Not me.
At least in the dear, dead days of yesteryear, the Catholic Church had a vast body of liturgical music and it had great choirs to perform it; together they constituted one of the great jewels of Western civilisation. But after Vatican II the Catholic Church virtually ditched the lot in favour of Immaculata and her bloody guitar, strum strum strum, and that vile gibberish called the folk Mass, witter witter, witter.
A couple of lights have kept the traditions of Catholic liturgical burning in Ireland, and one of the guardians of these lights has been Ite O'Donovan, formerly of the Pro-Cathedral and now director of the Lassus Scholars and Piccolo Lasso, which came into existence just a year ago.
In that mere year - the passage of time between two eruptions of BDU, two epidemics of Love, Mary - she has created a really fine choir which might even compensate for the pedestrians walking under your wheels and the winsome little cards with the robins on - but not for the Immaculatas with the guitars: nothing can compensate for that abomination.
Lassus, also known as the Dublin Choral Foundation, recently released its first CD, Sing Choirs of Angels. The choir has a quite magnificent sound, almost like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on E: pure and strong and true. That is part is Ite's work, in part the choristers' and in part due to the recording engineer, Bill Somerville-Large.
Schubert Mass
In these days of BDUs and mad Marys in their garrets scribbling thousands of cards to complete strangers, it is vastly reassuring to know that there is always Lassus and Piccolo Lasso - who tonight, by the way, are performing at the National Concert Hall, with Niamh Murray and others. Menu includes Schubert's Mass in C. If you go to the NCH tonight - and you should - watch out for the legions of BDUs who will almost certainly launch themselves at your car and instead of enjoying the concert you will spend the evening disentangling their bodies from your rack and pinion steering.
Finally, Frances Lucey. The last time I saw and heard her was in Wexford, where she was performing in an opera of perfectly diabolical awfulness, in which she was the sole redeeming feature. She is living in Germany now, where she has recorded a CD of Irish and American songs, entitled Off to Philadelphia. It is quite delightful, just the thing to take your mind off the heap of cards from Mary and the BDUs smeared all over your windscreen.