'Christmas Past'

 

by Willie Walsh

On my first trip to Dublin, Christmas lights glowered over the streets of the city, strung from building to building above the hurrying crowds of shop-girls in tight-waisted tweed coats and white platform boots, their hair piled high in beehives, or ironed straight down; long lines of cinema queues shuffling; music playing from open doorways; heavy-lashed women in maxi coats with wide belts and buckles; men wrapped in black duffels with red plaid lining, wooden toggle buttons done up against the cold.

The streets glistened wetly and rang to the cries of hawkers advertising wares: wrapping paper, cigarettes, Toblerones, tobacco, the while keeping a wary eye out for country guards whose huge feet paced the slick slabs of Henry Street, Mary Street, the licensed stalls of Moore Street, and O'Connell Street's wide pavements with measured care.

Buses, cars and bicycles swished along through red and yellow puddles, green, amber, neon blue, mirroring the season's celebration that brought forth the winter's shoppers, bustling along silently, or stood smoking on street corners waiting for Walk signs. And me among them, a tired but wide-eyed child from the fields, aged four, perhaps, hand in hand with my sister, Joan, on a trip to town to see Clery's Santa Claus and carry home a present.

Joan reared me, pushing my pram into the Health Board clinic to the disapproving stares of the good Catholic women who waited in the rooms there, nodding to each other all-knowingly against this young teenager and the tow-haired child of my working mother. She took me to the Reckitts factory at lunch-break, my father and his work-friends eager to see the new baby. Heads poked under the nylon canopy recoiled in surprise from a tiny me wearing a huge black wig they'd picked up somewhere and perched atop my head as a raucous joke. And it was Joan who, on the 47 bus along the winding rural road from Rockbrook, put up with my motion-sickness and brought me into Dublin as a treat. I recall clearly only the journey, the crowds and the lights, but one picture remains, taken in a photo booth somewhere, probably in Woolworth’s store, or in Clery's. My face looking at the camera from within the hood of my coat, sitting on the knee of her friend, Alice, understanding little of the scene, wishing for bed.

In our home, Christmas had few coloured lights, or tinsel. It was the story retold at bedtime, of how there was no room at the inn, of angels and shepherds and a little baby that they worshipped; three wise men and the gifts they brought, Christmas carols, and sleigh bells somewhere up the chimney. It was putting out a stocking at the foot of the bed, wondering if anything would be there tomorrow, vainly trying to stay awake and the miracle of fruit, chocolate and toys in the morning. It was about the marble pillars in Rathfarnham chapel, the men kneeling on the wooden pews with their heads bowed, the women at the front, the huge crucifix, the far-off wooden pulpit and altar-rail, the fenced-in Baptismal font at the back, and in a corner a crib, stocked with model animals and Joseph, Mary and Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

And now though the lights and sights are diminished as time goes forward, the distances from one end of the street to another smaller, I remember well my uncles, aunts, my family visiting in a much larger world. Aunt Kay, whose heart was only larger than her laugh; Alec, her husband, brimful of mirth; her only brother John, a quiet, cheerful uncle in a grey Morris Minor car; their sister, Mina, pristine, elegant; my cousin, Paul, who saw no faults in me; our aunt, Joan, who married for love; Billy, my godfather, whose face said he always knew a secret; my Granny Walsh, whose sense of humour overcame every disaster, real or imagined; Mick, her son-in-law, who'd grin at you crookedly, wink, laugh. They breezed in and out of my sheltered world, bringing with them a sense of a wider, larger life, grown-ups whose growing days are over, but whose mark was left on me as clearly as the memory of bright, coloured lights in a dark, winter world. I miss them.

May they all sleep in Heavenly peace this Christmas-time and always.

 

Willie Walsh

December, 1999

 

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