St Brigid blessed me with a joyous break
IT was like a second Christmas, but without the stress. Elsewhere on this page, you will see me having a go at the Greens, but there is one area in which they cannot be faulted. In 2016, they proposed the introduction of another public holiday, to mark St Brigid’s Day and Imbolc, traditionally seen in the Celtic calendar as the start of spring – and also, as it happens, to redress the imbalance in the fact we have only one holiday named after a person, St Patrick, and none named for a woman.
Last year, this became a reality, partly as a thank-you for social cohesion during the pandemic. At the time, I wasn’t sure about the timing, and thought a new public holiday at the end of September, when there’s still a bit of daytime heat, would be the better option.
I was wrong.
Welcome
Last weekend could not have been more welcome. There were five Mondays in January, which made the month feel endless, or at least more than it usually does anyway.
Honestly, there were days when I would wake up and groan, ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, is it not over yet?’ It didn’t help if, like me, you were paid early before Christmas, and had to soldier through five weeks before your electronic wallet was topped up again.
I wasn’t exactly reduced to living on Pot Noodle, but the wolf certainly was sniffing around the back fence, if not quite at the door.
As it happens, St Brigid’s Day always was a big deal in our house, because it was my father’s birthday (my mother was born on Christmas Day, so both occasions were hard to forget). Dad would have been 94 last week, and even though he is almost 26 years dead, that association is the one I most instinctively make with the date.
For me, and despite what Met Éireann tells us about meteorological seasons, I still go by the Celtic calendar. The first of February has always been the first day of spring for me, and there’s plenty of evidence it’s on the way.
Two weeks ago, I was walking through the grounds of Trinity College and was delighted to see the crocuses were sprouting, if not quite in flower – rebirth and renewal always bring a smile to your face, especially when they mark the fact you’ve survived another cold, dark winter.
Now, this public holiday is a sort of confirmation of that, and it was the missing link in our holidays at the start of all the other seasons – Bealtaine on the May weekend, Lúnasa at the start of August, and Samhain at the start of November. It’s nice to see the set completed.
The great thing about the timing is that, because we’re still a little broke and because the weather is far from dependable at this time of year, there really was no compulsion to get out and about. Certainly, I spent it just about as lazily as possible.
On Friday after work, my younger sister arrived down from Dublin, and we had a takeaway while watching Ireland’s thrilling victory over France in the rugby Six Nations.
On Saturday, I cooked the biggest chicken I’ve ever seen, almost 8lbs in weight, with all the trimmings, and enjoyed a bottle of wine I had been saving since friends gave it to me for my 60th birthday last July. Despite our best intentions, we stayed up talking until 3am, and I slept almost until noon on Sunday, a luxury seldom afforded.
On Monday, after my sister had left for home, I made stock from the chicken carcass and soup with the leftovers, which I wouldn’t usually have time to do, and somehow felt like I had been off for a week and not just a few days.
Opportunity
And that is the joy of this new holiday. It gives you permission to be as active or as inert as you wish. For some, that probably meant getting out and about, climbing up mountains for crisp, clear views, or giving the dog a run on the beach. Others I know tackled the garden for the first time this year, and even managed to get a mower on the grass; in the swamp that passes for a garden in my house, that will barely be possible before May.
But for many, just like me, it was a mix of duvet day and pyjama day, a lovely opportunity to just slob around, look at the jobs that need to be done, and then chastise myself for even thinking of bothering. There’s plenty of time for that, not least because St Patrick’s Day and Easter are so close together this year, you’d probably only have to take 20 minutes of annual leave to get a fortnight off.
So, yes, this new public holiday might very well be the best of them all. With nothing to do, and all weekend to do it; with cooking a choice rather than the obligation it is when the hordes descend at Christmas and New Year; and with literally no stress at all, it felt like the greatest gift of all – time.
And I loved every minute of it.