IT was not unusual for my father to work over Christmas.
There were six of us and it was extra money so it would have been hard to turn down.
There’s nothing too remarkable in that. It is the life of the immigrant. And the immigrant life has so, so often, been the Irish life.
After the summer riots in Dublin even those of us who didn’t want to had to acknowledge that there was this presence in Ireland. The presence of ultra-nationalistic, flag wavers, pedlars of disinformation and hate.
They live in a swirl of resentment and the idea that somehow Ireland was only Ireland sometime in the 1950s and that somehow Ireland should return to that.
They don’t resent hotels for rich, predominantly white, tourists but resent faded hotels for poor, predominantly not white, refugees. Which is especially ironic at this time of year, isn’t it?
The seething hostility of these people really is something to behold.
Some politicians in the recent elections made the fair enough point about already stressed public services in run down areas but there is a difference between legitimate concerns and bigotry.
One can be accommodated, the other cannot.
Not that my father’s Christmas shifts ever really affected Christmas as such.
Even when I remember him leaving Christmas evening to go on a night shift I remember just how lucky I was.
I had magical childhood Christmases. I don’t have one bad memory about them. And I realise now how extraordinarily fortunate that makes me.
It’s not an achievement of mine, of course. Being born into a loving family in a stable country isn’t an achievement. It’s not something I did. Being born in a place isn’t a personal accomplishment. Resenting others wanting the same is a terrible personal failing though.
Of course, we can all be cynical about Christmas. It’s all too materialistic. It’s a trap that puts people into a debt the dark days of January make only too sharp. It’s a time of too much. Too much drink. Too much food. Too much friction.
And that’s all true. But it is also true that it is a time where Irish families get together and Irish families are still, even now, shaped by emigration. So, they come home and for a little while everything is as it should be. Why would you not like that?
It’s true too, obviously, that Christmas is in the depths of winter and there is a bittersweet element to a time so steeped in nostalgia.
The missing of loved ones we once shared many a Christmas with. The missing of loved ones having a Christmas in a different country. The memories of Christmas past.
But there is, too, the joy of the current ones.
From childhood onwards I recall some wonderful Christmases.
The simple excitement of childhood ones to the slightly less sober ones of adulthood. And I still, after all these years, feel lucky enough to still love Christmas.
My mother always had at hand that old command to count your blessings and Christmas is a great time to do so.
So my Christmas dream now is that we light the fire in the old farmhouse and do battle with those draughts beneath the doors and through the windows.
There’ll have been a trip down to the sea if we’re lucky and this corner of Ireland looking out at the Atlantic. I don’t want anything. A book or two, maybe.
And we’ll have food and we’ll have drink and a bit of music and the fragile world out there and what’s coming in America and what’s coming beneath the flag wavers, well, we can forget about all of that for a while.
No harm in that at all. No harm in the laughter and the cheer and the looking after each other.
Let’s hope too that the generosity of spirit Christmas gives us, the ability to laugh and cry and think well of others, stays beyond Christmas.
Let’s hope that those here in Ireland who distort our history and debase our culture and fail to recognise the core truths of the Irish immigrant experience are as rejected as they just were in the election.
That would make for a very happy Christmas indeed.
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