Why, even for those of us who live 17,000 kms away, being back home is the best Christmas gift ever...
THE church is magical. The lights are dimmed, and Midnight Mass (well, the Irish midnight, which is 9pm) is conducted by candlelight.
The atmosphere is beautiful, respectful and joyful at the same time. A teacher puts a group together and they sing and act out the Nativity. A real baby plays the infant Jesus, and a live donkey and sheep are walked up the aisle. Only in Ireland!
To my friends in Australia, this might seem odd. For those of us who attend St Peter and Paul’s in Clonmel it is a central part of the delight of the Irish Christmas, and one of the reasons why coming home is so special.
I emigrated almost four years ago and now live in Melbourne but I’ve spent only one Christmas there – in 2016. Yes, we had a Christmas tree and dinner with friends but after we ate it was more of a party atmosphere. We went to the beach in St Kilda, which was packed, so it was a day of two halves – very traditional until the evening and very Australian after that.
Office workers tend to have to take enforced leave for a week or two and, because they’re on their summer holidays, they’re in great form but after Christmas Day my boyfriend, Chris, and I were looking around saying: ‘What do we do now?’.
If I had been at home it would have been all about family and board games and sitting up chatting with Mum and Dad, my sisters and my brother, and meeting old friends. And I missed it badly. Last year, without telling my parents, I came home and surprised them and I’m back again this year because nothing beats Christmas in Co. Tipperary.
I didn’t really intend to stay in Australia. I had a good friend living in Sydney so I felt that while she was there I should go because I was a bit afraid to set off on my own. I got the working holiday visa and I really only planned on spending a couple of months. Then I got a job and met Chris and I felt that if I went home then it would have been a waste of the visa because I had a full year one so why not stay?
CHRIS was living in Melbourne so I moved there and got another really good job in HR technology. I loved it and there really was no reason to come back at that point.
He has been there eight years and has an Australian passport now so we’re settled. We live in Port Melbourne and the city itself is so like Europe in so many ways I seldom feel homesick.
Still, though, I wanted to come home to be with family at this time of year. We flew last week and spent four days together in Brussels; when you travel such a distance you like to visit somewhere else too. It was so Christmassy with the markets, the trees, the lights, the snow. You don’t realise how great that atmosphere is until you don’t have it. Australians don’t do as many decorations and, because it’s summer, you can’t really see the lights until late.
After Brussels, I flew to Dublin and spent a few days there with my sister before driving to Clonmel on Wednesday, and Chris went climbing frozen waterfalls in Italy; climbing is his passion. He’ll spend Christmas with his own family in Middlesbrough, north-east England, and then come to Ireland for the New Year celebrations.
In many ways living abroad is nothing like as isolating it used to be. We have a family WhatsApp group so I’m constantly in touch with my mum, Lee, dad Paud, sisters Aisling, Kate and Alice, and brother Tadhg, who is home from Edinburgh. I’m 29, but still the baby of the family!
Throughout the year, the person I actually speak to most at home is my mum. Evening time for me is her morning so she’ll be relaxing having a cup of tea and I’ll be at home after dinner so we usually catch up then.
We’ll all be together on Christmas Day, except for Aisling, who lives in Dublin. She had a baby boy, Peadar, just last week and already has a daughter, Liadh, and they’ll spend the day itself with her husband Bernard’s family in Leitrim,
and come to Clonmel later in the week. I can’t wait to see my new nephew.
Christmas Day is my favourite. We have the full Irish fry for breakfast and, honestly, I’d come home for the SuperValu sausages alone – they are next-level good! When Chris is here, he just can’t believe how great they are and he gets really excited about them; being from England, he’s never really experienced that.
We start opening the presents and that tends to go on all through the day. Chris and I bought loads of little things for each other and wrapped them separately so we’d have something to open. We live in the countryside about 20 minutes’ walk from town. After breakfast we’ll go for a family walk or hike. I actually do have clothes for the weather.
Melbourne never really gets down to freezing but in winter the weather can be bitter – there’s a really cold, harsh wind – so I’m well prepared.
Mind you there were days before I left when the temperature hit a sweltering 36C so there is a bit of adjustment to be done.
After the walk, preparations for dinner start in earnest. In recent years, Alice and Kate have taken over, though Mum still keeps control of the turkey. I’ve got a bit more confident with my cooking so this year I announced I was going to prepare the meal.
IT’S my first time so I’m a bit nervous but as long as Mum looks after the bird I think it will be fine. We’ll sit down at 6pm to turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, broccoli, carrots, Brussels sprouts, roast parsnips, gravy and cranberry sauce.
Before that, though, we’ll do what is one of my favourite parts of the day: opening the crackers and putting on our paper hats. We sit around and do the jokes and the riddles and we put a good bit of time into it. We all read them out and the others have to work out what the answer is so that’s good craic.
Afterwards we have the Christmas pudding. We dim the lights and Mum pours alcohol on top and lights it, and we all cheer and take some futile photos that never come out, and then it’s served with brandy butter and whipped cream. We usually have a chocolate log as well – that never lasts long.
After the meal we move into what back in the day you would call the good room with the couches and the open fire. It’s kept really nice and it’s really cosy in there. And as we use it mostly at Christmas, we make the most of it. My mum is always trying to get the lads to bring in the coal but we all end up helping out!
We’re big into games, so we’ll play Dixit, a French game in which you have to describe the picture on a card and the others have to guess what it is. We play Scrabble and Countdown too, and charades. Tadhg gets really into it.
We’re big talkers too so we stay up late and catch up on all the news because we haven’t been face to face for such a long time, and stories are so much more engaging in person than on the phone or in emails and texts. My siblings and I are close in age so we all get on well and I really miss them.
On St Stephen’s Day I’ll go over to one of the girls’ houses and meet up with a group of schoolfriends from Loreto Clonmel and then go into town. There are about 13 of us. Most of them live in Dublin, one in New York, and another in Gibraltar so this is the only time of year we’re all in one place.
Later in the week I’ll go to the shops. Clonmel was a good town to grow up in and I was delighted this week to see new restaurants and cafés have popped up since last year, adding new life to my hometown. There’s a lovely spirit in the air and I love just bumping into people, schoolfriends, neighbours, and friends of my parents.
Clothes are so much cheaper here so I’ll definitely go to Penneys. I actually have loads of work shirts from there. One of my sisters sends them to me and people ask: ‘Oh, where did you get that?’ and I do the typically Irish ‘This old thing? Penneys’. And they say: ‘I thought it was designer’!
By the end of the weekend I’ll be starting to think about going back to Melbourne. When people ask if I’ll stay there forever, I always say I won’t because I miss my family a lot but I don’t know when I’ll come home. Chris is open to coming back and he actually loves the cold weather so that’s not an issue.
The main advantage is that the economy there in Melbourne is so good and our standard of living is so great. We live in a really beautiful apartment in an amazing suburb and we’re paying probably less than you’d pay in Dublin.
There is so much work and so much opportunity for progression in my job it’s hard to say goodbye to that. As we get older, though, we realise more and more just how important family is so I feel I’ll come back at some point.
Long before I have to make that decision, though, I know I’ll always return for Christmas when it’s possible.
It’s all about the donkey and the sheep at Midnight Mass, the lights, the frost on the tip of my nose, the dinner, the board games, the laughs, the chat, and the ease and warmth of being around the people I love most and who love me in return.
My new life in Australia is great, but there’s only one place I want to be at Christmas: Home.