Christmas in Mam’s family home... for the very last time
This year will be the last time that our writer will sit down to a festive party in her mother’s family home – but, amid the sorrow, it reminds us all of the season’s true spirit
RIGHT, come on, it’s time to go home,’ my mam tells me. ‘Ah please Mam, just ten more minutes, pleeeeeeease,’ 11-yearold me begs. She sighs. ‘Ok, ten more minutes...’
I gleefully hug her and return to the party, wondering what fun I can milk out of the last remnants of the night.
Will it be my uncle Mick dazzling us with card tricks? Or maybe the neighbour, Liam, playing the spoons? Or will it be my dad turning down the volume on my granddad’s hearing aid so he thinks the batteries have gone dead? For this is not a children’s party I’m keen to return to – it’s the annual Christmas party in my aunt Noeleen’s house, my mam’s family home.
For decades, it was the hub of our festivities, the homing point for aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and neighbours every Christmas night. As we got older and spread our wings, the parties moved elsewhere. But now there’s been a collective decision that we’ll all be back there again this Christmas – but this year, it’ll be for the last time.
After more than six decades in our family, the house has been sold, and my aunt and uncle will move out in January. It’s the end of an era – and an event that has prompted many thoughts of Christmases past over the last few weeks.
The house stands in a keyhole-shaped cul-de-sac in a north Dublin suburb. With 18 houses in total in ‘the avenue’, as we always refer to it, my grandparents bought No.40, on the top left hand side back in 1957. With five children at that stage, and two more to come, they settled in quickly in their new home.
My granny’s mother lived behind them and they visited her and her second husband often – I’ve heard many tales down the years of my stepgreat grandfather, my favourite of which is that he wouldn’t read his daily newspaper until all the creases had been ironed out of it.
As the seven children grew up, married and moved out, it was the second youngest, Noeleen, and her husband Mick who remained in the house with my grandparents. My granddad suffered from a spinal disease that made it very difficult for him to get around so they took care of him until he died in 1991. My nana had passed away in 1988.
We lived nearby and myself and my brother Paul, and Noeleen’s two children, Peter and Michelle, were all reared together like four siblings, flitting easily between both houses.
The avenue was a dream for us as children. There were few cars in those days, so we could play without interruption and we could be easily seen from the window of any of the houses. Many of the neighbours are still there today – in fact, my best friend Liz’s parents live next door, though Liz moved to Wales more than 20 years ago.
Another neighbour had a nephew who came from Derby each summer to visit. He was around the same age as us and we thought he was so exotic – I mean, he spoke with a different accent!
My Manchester United allegiance comes mainly from the fact that Liam Whelan’s family also live in the avenue – a sister is still there now – and I grew up hearing tales of the talented Busby Babe who tragically lost his life in the Munich air crash.
THE next-door neighbour used to pay us to pick tacks up from the ground – 2p per tack. You may wonder how we’d make any money at all, but the thing was, we found dozens. It’s only as you get older that you realise he must have been putting them there for us to find. It certainly kept us occupied for hours on end – which I suspect was his plan all along. I just hope no unsuspecting driver ended up getting one stuck in a tyre.
It wasn’t wholly sweetness and light, however. There was one elderly lady who lived alone and if your ball went into her garden, she would rush out, pick it up and burst it. There was many a game of ‘dare’ centred around being brave enough to run into that
garden. Our primary school was close by and we could go home for lunch if we liked. Liz used to make me go with her every Thursday as it was stew day in her house. She hated it, while I loved it, so I would go with her and polish it off.
In return, each Friday I would have to eat my dinner in the front room as I’m allergic to fish. I’d scrape my vegetables out the window to her and she’d bury them in the flower bed so that I didn’t have to eat them.
But apart from our daily shenanigans, I don’t remember a time when we didn’t go to the house for Christmas. My granddad’s immobility, coupled with the fact that Noeleen was actually born on Christmas Day, made it the natural location for our annual festivities.
Whenever I go to parties nowadays where there are children present, I despair when I see them taking off to another room or burying their heads in a tablet or smartphone. I used to be thrilled to be allowed into the middle of the adult chats and the inevitable singsong.
And, of course, everyone had their party piece. Mick would sing Patsy Cline’s Crazy. He’s a very talented singer but, to entertain us kids, he would pretend he couldn’t pronounce his r’s and we’d fall around with laughter when he belted out: ‘Wowwy! Why do I let myself wowwy?’ Or the neighbour Francis would launch into The Rooster song by Donal O’Shaughnessy, complete with actions.
If you’re not familiar with it, it involves hens, chickens, cows, elephants and a gay rooster – and he played each to perfection.
Noeleen’s party piece, meanwhile, was Chris de Burgh’s Patricia The Stripper, also complete with actions. Come to think of it, this may have been the point at which my mam was keen to get us out of there...
Then attention would turn to the neighbours known as Three Wise Men – so-called because Noeleen opened the door to them one Christmas night at 3am, kneeling down, singing Away In A Manger until she agreed to let them in – and they’d break out the spoons, pint glasses and harmonica and regale us with Irish classics.
Teresa, from two doors away, who unfortunately passed away earlier this year, would have the whole room rocking with her version of Ten Guitars. Her son Stephen was born on Christmas Day too, so she’d be double celebrating.
MY AUNT Pauline’s favourite was always The Red Rose Café, while my aunt Marie’s was The Candy Store On The Corner. My late uncle John’s was Blue Moon in tribute to his beloved Manchester City – he always aimed this one towards me, his Manchester United nemesis.
Uncle Tony – who’s not technically my uncle, he’s Michelle’s uncle on the other side; it’s an Irish family, keep up – would always do an Eagles number. In fact, I fell in love with the song New York Minute through hearing him sing it rather than the version by Don Henley. I would often have to help him out when he forgot the words.
In the midst of all this, there’d be chatting and storytelling – sometimes the same stories as last year, but we didn’t mind.
My favourite seat was always beside my dad – we have the same sense of humour and his little asides and slaggings would always make me giggle.
One year, a neighbour, Paddy, was sitting with my late uncle Johnny on stools behind the sofa. Paddy is a big, broad, bald man, while Johnny was equally bald but smaller and frailer. They were sitting facing us, with the sofa coming up to their midriffs.
My dad took one look at them and started singing, ‘Do, do, do, do, do, man-a-man-ah, do, do, do, do’, the theme tune of Waldorf and Statler in The Muppets. I was nearly carted out from laughing.
After my grandparents passed away and my aunts and uncles saw their families raised, the parties got smaller – it became too awkward to cart children across the city with no way home at the end of the night. So the Christmas party moved to my mam’s house for a few years and, in more recent times, to Michelle’s. Some of the songs are still the same, most of the stories are too, but we’ve added our own twists.
Then earlier this year, Noeleen and Mick decided to sell the house and are now expecting to move out in mid-January. Myself and Michelle thought it would be a good idea to have one last hurrah. Noeleen took some convincing at first but she’s on board now – provided we do all the setting up and cleaning up. Really, it’s the least we can do.
The avenue has changed a lot. There’s now too many cars parked in it to even contemplate having a game of football or rounders, and I wouldn’t be on first-name terms with some of the newer occupants. But I’ll forever have ties to that little keyhole street, the location for so many of my childhood memories – and my mother’s before me. And I’m sure we’ll always have a warm welcome back there from those who still remember us.
These days, my parents, my brother and his family all come to me on Christmas Eve for dinner and my biggest hope is that 20 years from now, his two sons will recall those gatherings warmly — with hopefully not too many ‘embarrassing aunt’ incidents.
Because amid the shopping, the cooking, the stress and the spending, what Christmas is really all about is family and friends, spending time together and making memories.