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It's 18:00, and I'm still in work, waiting on some very small details of a page which has to be finished today so that it can be tested. I could start some of the other stuff I have to do, or I could write an LJ entry.
WARNING: This rambles. I'm tired, and trying to recall stuff from twenty years ago.
As a teenager, I used to wonder what it was other people saw in Christmas. My childhood was essentially divided into two parts - before my mother died, and after. I don't remember a whole lot from before. That is, I remember what happened, if I sit down and think about it. I can remember the layout of rooms and the smell of some of them, I can remember the Humber my father drove until I was six or so. But give me a more abstract concept, such as Christmas, and there's not much there.
I remember bits. I remember one year, for some reason, we couldn't get a tree. Whether it was that the two front rooms of the house (this was in Camolin, for those who've seen Ballycadden) were too cold to be inhabited that year, or neither of my folks had time to get one, or we couldn't afford one (a concept that I wouldn't have recognised at the time, I think) - we just didn't have one. We had some branches of greenery in one of the kitchen windows, with ornaments hanging from them. And oddly, that not-a-tree is one of the images I retain best. I'm not sure if I liked it or not - I remember protesting that it wasn't right. But I think I did like it really.
I remember someone else's tree from another year. A relative, probably one of my grown-up cousins, who lived in a flat with high ceilings somewhere in Dublin. They had a tree which seemed huge - in my memory, it's about 12 feet tall, and given the Georgian house that the flat was in, it's not impossible that it was. But it was decorated in while and silver, and I remember thinking that it was nice, but cold, and that I liked our tree better. But I don't remember our tree.
I remember relatives coming to visit at Christmas, older folks mostly, who smelt of tobacco and whiskey, and who gave me money because they hadn't a clue what to give a child. I remember the table - the same round table that's in the kitchen in Ballycadden, actually - covered with a white table-cloth, and I remember a Christmas cake with a red paper stripe around it. I remember the smell of sherry.
It is in my memory that my mother loved Christmas, although I have no clear memory of any real manifestation of this. Her favourite book from childhood - now on our shelves, and something I'm very fond of myself - was something called The Robin's Christmas Eve. And when she had to sing me to sleep, she sang "Away in a Manger". I remember that.
Maybe it's because she liked it so much, and because she died so close to Christmas that we never celebrated it much at home thereafter. Usually, we worked right up to Christmas Eve - my father's a cabinet-maker, woodworker, and turner, and is acknowledged as one of Ireland's Master Craftsmen in about three different areas. One year, we delivered a rocking horse to a house seventy miles from home at 4am on Christmas Morning. And I accepted this, pretty much, as the Way Things Were.
And it's only now, that I'm starting to see from my experiences in Finland, that there is something to the season, that I'm beginning to recall things from early childhood. The bizarre thing is that I'm glad I didn't remember much, or enjoy teenage Christmases that much, because now, I can approach it without preconceptions or expectations, and enjoy it so much more.
Hm. That looks like a post...
WARNING: This rambles. I'm tired, and trying to recall stuff from twenty years ago.
As a teenager, I used to wonder what it was other people saw in Christmas. My childhood was essentially divided into two parts - before my mother died, and after. I don't remember a whole lot from before. That is, I remember what happened, if I sit down and think about it. I can remember the layout of rooms and the smell of some of them, I can remember the Humber my father drove until I was six or so. But give me a more abstract concept, such as Christmas, and there's not much there.
I remember bits. I remember one year, for some reason, we couldn't get a tree. Whether it was that the two front rooms of the house (this was in Camolin, for those who've seen Ballycadden) were too cold to be inhabited that year, or neither of my folks had time to get one, or we couldn't afford one (a concept that I wouldn't have recognised at the time, I think) - we just didn't have one. We had some branches of greenery in one of the kitchen windows, with ornaments hanging from them. And oddly, that not-a-tree is one of the images I retain best. I'm not sure if I liked it or not - I remember protesting that it wasn't right. But I think I did like it really.
I remember someone else's tree from another year. A relative, probably one of my grown-up cousins, who lived in a flat with high ceilings somewhere in Dublin. They had a tree which seemed huge - in my memory, it's about 12 feet tall, and given the Georgian house that the flat was in, it's not impossible that it was. But it was decorated in while and silver, and I remember thinking that it was nice, but cold, and that I liked our tree better. But I don't remember our tree.
I remember relatives coming to visit at Christmas, older folks mostly, who smelt of tobacco and whiskey, and who gave me money because they hadn't a clue what to give a child. I remember the table - the same round table that's in the kitchen in Ballycadden, actually - covered with a white table-cloth, and I remember a Christmas cake with a red paper stripe around it. I remember the smell of sherry.
It is in my memory that my mother loved Christmas, although I have no clear memory of any real manifestation of this. Her favourite book from childhood - now on our shelves, and something I'm very fond of myself - was something called The Robin's Christmas Eve. And when she had to sing me to sleep, she sang "Away in a Manger". I remember that.
Maybe it's because she liked it so much, and because she died so close to Christmas that we never celebrated it much at home thereafter. Usually, we worked right up to Christmas Eve - my father's a cabinet-maker, woodworker, and turner, and is acknowledged as one of Ireland's Master Craftsmen in about three different areas. One year, we delivered a rocking horse to a house seventy miles from home at 4am on Christmas Morning. And I accepted this, pretty much, as the Way Things Were.
And it's only now, that I'm starting to see from my experiences in Finland, that there is something to the season, that I'm beginning to recall things from early childhood. The bizarre thing is that I'm glad I didn't remember much, or enjoy teenage Christmases that much, because now, I can approach it without preconceptions or expectations, and enjoy it so much more.
Hm. That looks like a post...