Sideline Cut: Shortly after noon on Christmas Day, a bunch of people will gather on a pier near where I am from and deposit themselves into the freezing waters of the Atlantic, writes Keith Duggan.
Some leap dramatically over the edge, shrieking and flailing like those who sacrifice themselves to Japanese volcanic craters. Others of us adopt a low-key approach and just roll or flop into the water virtually unnoticed, like the seals you see in David Attenborough shows. A few elect to descend the stone steps of the pier that are carpeted in wet and mossy algae, wincing as they stoically lower themselves into the negative temperatures. One friend, fuelled by early whiskeys, once dived blissfully off the edge without checking the depth and discovered, to both his own horror and that of those assembled, that he had effectively done a Greg Louganis into a rockpool. The plaster of Paris was off by spring.
Kids appear, scrawny and happy-go-lucky little headers still on a Santa rush. Happily charming the gallery, they execute the perfect somersaults they spent the previous summer mastering, instantly experience the clearest shock of their young lives when they meet the water, and hurtle back up the stone steps with blue lips and clear signs of hypothermia. And they are so grateful just to be back out of that ocean that they do not give one bit of lip for the entire holiday. In fact, some never speak again.
It is an odd tradition, the Christmas Day swim, but one that shows no sign of abating. Other places tend to bring in the New Year with a dip in the ocean but around our part of the world it has always been the 25th. Some people do it for charity, others to clear the system, more just because they always have. After Mass, whatever the weather, a flow of cars will appear on the narrow road that overlooks the pier. It is a great pier, Creevy, with a just a few small fishing boats on a natural inlet that makes it great for swimming and a clear view across to St John's Point, whose lights appear in the evening. Generally it is perfectly calm but it gets buffeted ferociously during rough weather - the famous storm of 1988 actually altered and shifted the local landscape.
Most times of the year if you go there, you may have the place more or less to yourself. The 25th is easily the busiest day, which always feels strange because, generally speaking, Christmas Day is the one time left in this country when you could travel vast distances without encountering other people. But the pier is a fairly reliable reunion point for people living in the States or down the country or wherever.
And it is a great leveller. The Swim does not discriminate against age, size, gender or occupation. The sea accepts every sort. And so you have mechanics, teachers, men of the cloth, students, chefs, musicians, cops, the occasional robber and others shivering in unison, daintily skipping across the smooth slabs of stone that greet the bare soles of your feet like blocks of ice.
There is no graceful way of going in. Some men, solemn teachers of mathematics in yellow Speedos, for instance, or GAA men with fearsome reputations to uphold, will inhale heartily and clap their hands loudly in anticipation as if to say, "I have been looking forward to this all year." And they might start out with a jovial little jog across to the stone edge where people "go over". But within seconds the rawness of the air makes your skin hurt, and your eyes begin to water, and your feet tingle and then simply lose all sensation. And when you look behind you, Bravery, your boon companion, is still all cosy in the front seat of the car with the radio on and the heater jacked up to full, and he is laughing at you and giving you the fingers. And all you can do is suppress the urge to whimper. If the tide is in far enough, you jump - well, half-heartedly step off the sensible world in a state of frozen resignation - because that is the quickest way of facing up to your fate. Otherwise, you have to go through the slow agony of steps.
A few years ago the swim actually had to be switched to the beach because of a low tide. It was fine until people made it to the water, when it began to pelt hailstones, forcing everyone to huddle wretchedly in the biting, numbing foam for protection. Ambulances were called that year.
Anyway, sooner of later, you find yourself in the water. And suffice it to say it is not a nice place to be. You can only know the true definition of cold when you jump into Creevy on the 25th. Nobody screams - or else the pitch is so high that it is only audible to the canine world. You are too busy trying to learn how to breathe again. You wonder if you landed on any fish. But there are no fish. The fish are all in some fishy pub, drinking hot whiskeys. Fish aren't mad.
And swimming doesn't come into it. I defy Ian Thorpe to participate in the swim and manage more than three coherent strokes. Oh, there is movement all right but it is the dance of the desperate, based on getting back to dry land as quickly as possible.
You shove pensioners to one side, climb over children, half drown your best friend, anything to get you out. And then you climb up the steps. Your face has gone red but the rest of you has turned that opaque colour of vein-blue. And you know that when your tear ducts thaw out, you will cry long and bitterly. Needless to say your senses have long since fled so that as you clamber out of the water, spluttering and blubbering, your vision has both doubled and blurred. You are only vaguely sure of your own name and have absolutely no idea of where you live. You kind of crawl/crab-walk up those steps, acknowledging that you must look a lot like Smeagol from Lord of the Rings. And always, always, will come the question, a pleasant and startling reminder of the civilised world you have just departed: "How's the water?"
Of course it is a question, no matter how politely asked, that does not deserve a reasonable answer. This is Ireland, a country where it is possible to find ice floes in July. Now it is a little after noon on December 25th when black clouds hang low enough to touch and the sea is grey and lazily magnificent and capped by an Arctic mist. And people are emerging from it in various states of ruination, shocked into blankness, much too numb to worry about the minor heart attacks they are suffering. They are cold beyond belief and surprisingly docile and so they manage to mumble in reply, these chattering victims, "Ah, not so bad. It was worse last year."
After half an hour, survivors grin optimistically at each other, testifying that they feel great now. But that is just a white lie. You don't feel great or even good again until about March. By one o'clock the sport has ended and everyone deserts the pier quickly, suddenly chilled and ready for indoors. The sea is left to its own company. And that is the last of the swimming until the following summer.
