'Twas the night before Christmas and all through my little white house, not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse. The room is lit only by firelight. I'm sitting in an old green, crushed fabric chair with frayed armrests and studded buttons rising up and out from behind me. I close my eyes, I am weary. As grateful as I feel to be here in my very own home; at a brief backward glance, 2022 has been a hard year overall. I sink deeper into the softness of the chair, my body relaxes and my mind begins to play a reel like an old picture house, of Christmas eves gone by.
Well over two decades ago, during my late teens and through much of my twenties, this night was a religiously boozy homecoming in the local pub with my cousins and friends. We spent those Christmas eves in pubs packed with young people just like us. We were all there under the influence of that strong magnetic draw home for the holidays, from college, travel and work in the cities. We teetered into the crowd on high heels, new Christmas clothes revealed as heavy winter coats were shed and discarded over the backs of bar stools.
Shoulder to shoulder, mouths pressed to ears, forming shouting shapes, in an effort to be heard over the hub-bub and throbbing chatter. The sounds of celebrating another year, the tradition of reunion to lighten the dark drudgery of mid-winter.
Mistletoe hung strategically above the bar's dark polished mahogany countertop, slick with overflowing Guinness and sticky with Cola Cube shots . If I close my eyes and breathe deeply, I can recall vividly, the tipsy butterflies that rose and tumbled down low when I locked eyes with the guy I’d kissed the Christmas before when I was home between travels.
News and gossip were swapped and exchanged, often a year or mores worth to barter amongst old friends. "New York is going great yeah, I'm working in a bar over there. The craic is mighty! No I'm not sure how long more I'll stay but I'll head back after the Christmas for another while anyway and see what happens". Catching up with the state of play in parish politics always made for interesting conversation, "She broke up with him? I didn't know that and now she's pregnant with your man? She's better off sure without that eejit!"
Calls of "it's my round what are you having?" rose and fell, swirled around and around again in the humid air, thick with the scent of bodies, cigarette smoke, damp coats and red bull. Every once in a while an order was with "That one's on the house, a Christmas drink for ye!".
And all too early, the dreaded flashing of the lights in the bar broke through the revelry to signify last orders. I tipped back my head until the slick rounded remnants of ice cubes slapped against my teeth and I waved to last Christmas's guy across the bar and mouthed with a grin, "I'll see you Stephenzez night!" My cousins, sister, brother and I fumbled for coats and held onto each others arms laughing and tripping our way down the street to the quiet end of the village. We climbed noisely into my mother's waiting car and sat perched on knees, shared seat belts and tumbled out at my Aunt's house down the road for a few rounds of cards. We were met there by uncles, aunts, cousins and my folks too for another long standing family tradition on Christmas eve.
Free pouring, eye ball measured shots of vodkas or spiced rum topped up with fizzing cola accompanied hot trays of crisp, beige party food and shared good fellas pizza with bubbling cheese that lifted the skin from the roof of my impatient mouth. Flushed cheeks glowed from the roaring fire crackling in the middle of the cozy sitting room. Intermittent shouts of "open the door before I pass out with the heat" from middles aged aunties fanning their faces. Long-legged bambi like young cousins shivered behind the shed outside, cheeks sunken from drawing breath through illicit cigarettes, chins tilted skywards in exhaulted exhale.
For many Christmas Eves we played intense rounds of a card game called 45, complicated and rule bound, kept alive by our west limerick parents. Passed down to us as it had been taught to them - by reciting the rules quickly and relentlessly, learned initially by rote rather than real understanding, grasped eventually by repetition. "Five, jack, joker, ace of hearts, ace. The higher the red, the lower the black".
45, spoil 5, auction 45, 120 - a game by any other name would raise as much controversy! Vicious accusations over who renaged, dealt badly, lost track of the play, forgot one of the many, every growing rules, "killed" a trick, or missed a turn to top up a drink. No one dared take a pee break!
Some years one of us cousins would have a significant other (S.O.) squashed in nervously between the leaned in bodies clustered close to the card/coffee table. The rules were blurted at them in the same impatient manner, if he or she was your S.O. you consulted with them, guided their next move and pleaded for forgiveness when they took the stabilisers off and chose their own card to lay down in the gladiators' arena where ultimately every man, woman and child were in it for themselves.
The night's last round was always €10 to participate, "the higher fee to sharpen the mind", as the elders said! As the liquor flowed, it shrouded the annual cheaters furtive glances, it moved cards away from unaware chests and allowed full view into their tipsy neighbour's stable. The ever topped up glasses dulled the senses as obvious misdemeanours were missed. Later we debated between hiccups about how wiley cousin John mysteriously won the high rollers round every year?
Tonight from the small red portable speaker on the driftwood shelf above me, wafts the melodious, throaty strains of Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong & Frank Sinatra. Frank reminds me of that Christmas Eve snow-bound in Brooklyn back in 2002. One of only three Christmas Eves I have been away from home.
I waited tables in the Mercury Bar on the east side of manhattan until late on December 24th. Finally the kitchen closed and after I wiped the last ketchup bottle clean, I ripped off my apron stuffed with green bills of tips earned and wound the apron strings around it securing it into a little ball. I sealed it safely inside my bag and swung that overnight backpack across my shoulders as I walked out of the noisy, steamy bar's glass doors. The huge fur lined hood of my puffy coat offered little protection against the chilling wind that cut down 8th avenue. Swirling flurries of snow tumbled and spun softly around me. The flakes clung to my eyelashes as I gazed up at their winter ice dance. I raised my arm and slid into the backseat of a yellow cab to Times Square and took the Q subway train to Brooklyn, to my friend Grace's house. Where she, her roommate and several other Irish friends were to spend Christmas together.
I was 21 years old and it was my first christmas away from home. I don't remember much about that night, other than we drank alot of Baby Guinness and pink creamy Tequila Rose shots in the local bar. We caterwalled and crucified Fairytale of New York and I phoned home full of vodka fuelled homesickness, slurring the words "I miss ye all". The night ended with pillow talk to my friend Lynn, on a blow up bed in the living room of the two bedroom apartment sleeping seven expats, as the snow banked up against the window panes.
Fast forward three Christmas Eves later when the sun set late on 24th June over Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia. I was at a house party until early into Christmas morning. When I finally wandered home just before dawn, I met Paddy outside our apartment. He was a new arrival from Limerick, who had been sleeping on the sofa where I was renting. He was on route to another party, I dreaded going back to a quiet house so I tagged along.
The details are long since forgotten other than my night ended with my head resting on Paddy's comforting, boulder sized shoulder as I stared with a narcotic induced vacant intensity at a shape in the corner of the room that was morphing and changing form from a wild boar to a ship and many other wondrous creations. Paddy brought my flight of fancy to an end when he declared it was in fact an ironing board and perhaps we had best go home.
My ensuing hangover was so particularly violent that I missed Christmas dinner BBQ at a friend's house and arrived to delicately nibble a burger at 5pm Christmas day. In some deep seated lonesome place within, I wanted to pretend it wasn't really Christmas there in 30 degree heat, a very long way from the comforting familiarity of home. So I took measures to block it all out in the way this young, wild one favoured once upon a time.
The years trickled by and back home on Irish soil, I began to go home to my parents' house after the cozy local pub closed their doors, foregoing the late night card skullduggery and the inevitable hangover that grew more ferocious with age. Ructious house parties were replaced by glasses of prosecco, opening presents as a family, "I love it! It's exactly what I wanted", whilst quietly searching for the receipt the following morning amongst the discarded wrapping paper. And I could always rely on my stock of festive pyjames and fluffy slippers to be replenished.
Other years, my hands were intertwined with anothers, feet propped upon the coffee table watching Christmas movies together, sipping mulled wine and dozing before midnight struck. Curling in for a kiss whispering, "Happy Christmas my love".
On my third Christmas Eve away, we strolled as a couple, gloved hand in hand, along the festooned streets of Salzberg. We gazed at the lights, inhaled the wafting scents of cinnamon, nutmeg and steaming mulled wine from the rows of wooden huts at the markets. The magic of Christmas spellbound us for a while.
The years rolled by some more and last year in the living room by the fire, I watched my favourite Christmas movie - Home Alone, alone. The house was silent though he were there, in bed watching netflix on that cold 24th December. He was asleep before I crept in. I held my breath as I lay my head soundlessly on the pillow and another ceiling staring vigil unfolded, where I wished things were different and we were back in Salzberg again.
Tonight, on this Christmas Eve 2022, it's just me. My legs are outstretched against the backdrop of a blazing log fire. A cup of mulled apple cider sits on the old wooden chest beside me, its oak is lined with age and each indented imperfection no doubt tells a story. Leo's soft french bulldog snores rise and fall from his bed set between my slippered feet and the stove door that radiates heat and a warm, amber and ash light towards us. Molly, my aging white labrador friend, lies half curled into herself, in her huge new orthopedic bed nestled alongside me, her eyes flicker gently. Bruce is stretched out to full length, his paws and tail overflow from the edges of the scuffed tan leather two seater sofa, his sleeping face is lit by the tree's blue, red and orange fairy lights.
It is dark and quiet outside beyond the sage green front door, with its willow wreath bent and shaped by my hands. The silence broken only by the soft rustle and swoosh of the pine trees swaying in the bitter late December breeze and the patter, plop and splosh of rain drops against the windows. The dancing flames of the new candle I treated myself to, fan cinnamon, vanilla and star anise into the air of my warm glow living room.
As I write this recollection of Christmas Eves gone by, I sink deeper into present night's comfort, for there is nowhere else I'd rather be right now than in my comfy old armchair, with my worn slippers shrugged off. I am lulled by the rhythmic breathing of my three beloved dogs. Christmas eve has held a very different kind of magic through my ages. Traditions I thought would last forever have faded away with the passage of time and others, though present for just for a short while were as special as those decades long. Tonight on my 41st Christmas Eve, all is calm and I'm at peace in my own company; an ease my teenage, twenty and thirty- something year old self had to live to find. The clock has just struck 12.01am, the gentle click of the hand releases me from my reverie and into a new Christmas day.
"Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night"