Damien's Diary: Christmas past in Ballyjamesduff

I’d come home from school. Let’s say it was on a Friday. Primary school. We would get a half day for the Christmas holidays.

Maybe Christmas day would be the following Sunday or Monday, for example. And at six o’clock, I would be at the bus stop on the Navan Road waiting for the Streamline bus to take me to Virginia. It was about an hour-long journey. Me around 9, 10 or 11. My uncle Philip would be waiting for me to take me to the farm in Ballyjamesduff, where he and Granny lived.

Christmas holidays

And so began my Christmas holidays. On arrival, it could be snowing or raining, but there might be a cow calving or some bit of work to be done outside. So off with the good clothes and straight into the wellingtons. Christmas Eve was always a fun day.

My cousins, the Gills, would call over. The house would be abuzz with them and other neighbours calling in. There would be movies on the television and, no matter what way you turned, you’d be hit with a selection box.

There was a routine of going into “the” town in the evening, to do some last-minute shopping and the big wide streets of Ballyjamesduff would be aglow with colour and fairy lights and people criss-crossing from this shop and that. It would end with a visit to Langtry’s or McCabes.

Mine was a Cavan Cola or, as some bottles had it, Cavan Kola. That’s when we would be going to Mass on Sunday morning. In latter years, the Cavan Kola happened after “midnight mass”, which of course was at nine o’clock! The chatter in the pub I loved. All older farmers discussing the state of the nation.

Back home, Granny would be waiting up with the wireless going and reading the paper. She was a great woman, who died in her 100th year in 1994. But she always waited up to make a cup of tea before bed.

Gifts

Santa didn’t come to me in Derrylea. Instead, he came down the chimney back in Dublin. I didn’t mind. I waited until St Stephen’s Day, when the rest of the family arrived down with my present. Bizarrely, I always say “going down to Cavan” and “up to Dublin”!

Anyway, Granny would have her present to give me on Christmas morning. It was a morning that – unlike my classmates back in cosy Caslteknock – began with me putting on my farm clothes to go out and fodder.

And then sweep the dung out of the cattle shed and the byer. Smelly work for a Christmas morning, but I felt superior in a funny way to my peers back in Dublin. It was a privilege for me, which they didn’t enjoy.

Then it was time to put on the new clothes and off to Cavan town to my Auntie Kathleen and Uncle Michael for Christmas dinner, where I was spoiled with presents and money! One Christmas, Kathleen wrapped a jar of goose grease for Granny’s sore knee.

When I got back to Bally’duff, I thought it was for the dog and delighted in giving it to him until Granny asked where was the goose grease for her sore knee? Idyllic memories at this time of year. Happy Christmas! CL

Greatest moments

We must remember that the recent RTÉ series to find Ireland’s greatest sporting moment was about finding a moment that sticks in all of our minds and not about establishing what Ireland’s greatest achievement or feat was.

If that was the case, then the Irish soccer team of 1990 wouldn’t be in the top 100, as they won nothing. And how no Dublin player was nominated for sports star of the year, I’ll never know.

Forgotten Christmas traditions

Christmas through three generations