Memories of a Magic Christmas

Christmas always brings about nostalgia and fond memories of times long ago, times back in Ireland when folks lived frugally but loved abundantly.

The Irish Voice asked some of its readers to share some of their warmhearted memories from the land they left many years ago.

Patricia McGouron, a Co. Derry native, joyfully remembers Christmas 1938. Like most Catholic families of that era, money was scarce.

"We were poor back then," she said, "but waking up to an open fire and my stocking hanging up," put a smile on McGouron's face that Christmas morning.

A peek inside her stocking revealed good old Santa Claus had left her an orange, an apple, some peanuts and, to her utter delight, a smiling doll.

"It was a beautiful doll that a rich lady had sent on to me, but all the time I believed it was from Father Christmas," said McGouron, who came to the United States in 1946 and now lives in Michigan.

McGouron thinks back to the great quantity of food that graced their table that Christmas. "We had a big vat of barley soup, chicken, plenty of vegetables and some soda bread."

As an after dinner treat that year, fruitcake was shared among the adults and kids and "a very special wine that was kind of burning going down and made weeks ahead of time," was also enjoyed.

For Maura Mulligan, a Co. Mayo export, December 26 was more special to her than Christmas Day itself. St. Stephen's Day, as it is celebrated in Ireland, was the day Mulligan and her siblings would peer out the window and wait on the many musicians and singers who graced their house the day that is dubbed by the Irish as Wren Day.

"The faint sound of tin whistles in the distance became clearer as the Wren Boys came closer to the house," she said.

Mulligan remembers the excitement as her mother opened the door to, what she describes, "the most exciting visitors" donned in disguises. Mulligan and her siblings would spend minutes trying to guess who was behind the festive costumes.

"That's Tommy Kilkenny, I'd think 'No. Its Paddy McHugh', my sister Mag insisted. Or maybe it's SZan Kenny?"

After the Mulligans were entertained, Maura's mother would give the Wren Boys a "few sweets or a penny so they'd go off to blazes with themselves and take their ruaile buaile (mischief) someplace else."

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Nster.com