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Christmas in Cappawhite
CHRISTMAS IN CAPPAWHITE
Elizabeth McNamer
With the autumn leaves swept up, and winter fires glowing in the chimney place, the first sign of Christmas appeared, the baking of the Christmas cake. Early in November (the month of the holy souls was temporarily forgotten), shop keepers shelved raisins and currants and sultanas and nuts, and self- raising flour, and the hens were busy laying extra eggs. Publicans ordered in the indispensable just-once- a-year brandy. Housewives sought out the recipe passed down the generations.
Aproned women eagerly set about the happy ritual: the pudding bowl was taken down from the shelf and the black cast-iron baking pot wiped clean, oiled, and fitted with grease-proof paper and the fire was poked and topped with damp coals. And then the soaking of the fruit in boiling hot water, the beating of the eggs, the creaming of the butter and sugar, the sifting of the flour, and the crowning of the mixture by the liberal soaking with the brandy ( always reserving the "sup for the cat.")
"Cats don't drink brandy" the children said.
"Oh but they do" said their fathers.
"Saint Bernard's dogs have brandy" someone remembered
"Jasus, Josie you didn't put all the booze in the bloody cake!"
Good children were allowed to stir the mixture while wishing for something that was bound to be granted (if you wished for the right thing). My mother suggested I wish for good health so that I could enjoy eating it.
The cake took several hours to bake over the fire, and the smell from every house was intoxicating. The half empty brandy bottle was placed on the kitchen table.
"Just a little sup to welcome the season."
And the evening was red nosed and merry
Over the weeks the cake had to be kept moist by the additions of more brandy (if the cat hadn't swallowed it all.)
As November waned, Advent began. A time of prayer and penance. Children were admonished to say 4000 Hail Mary's in honor of the 4000 years the world was kept waiting for the coming of Jesus. This amounted to three rosaries a day and I remember being on my knees all day Christmas eve trying to make up for my deficiencies.
In early December toys began to appear in the shop windows. … rag dolls of green and pink and red, some with black hair and some with fair, stood primly displayed against the back wall, surrounded by small tea sets, and cots, and tin soldiers, and golliwogs and little train sets and games of ludo and snakes and ladders and checkers and jig saw puzzles and books about Aladdin and Cinderella and fairies. How I loved to peer in the window and imagine that they all belonged to me. Of course I would not want the toys for myself, but I would save them for my children when I was grown up. Greed was a venial sin, as my grandmother knew well, and even to lust after toys was an occasion of sin. Confessions during the Advent season were frequent and penances doled out (usually extra Hail Mary's, as if we did not have enough already).
Dan Fitzgibbon's window displayed dresses and shoes and had a silver garland around the window pane. Buckley's bakery made barm-brack bread with currants and spices and sometimes we had this for tea as a treat (although again it might be a sin when we considered the starving children of Europe).
Once in early December my mother took my brother Michael and me to Cork to see the decorations. Chinese lanterns were suspended from poles in the dining room of the hotel where we went to have tea. I had never seen anything so beautiful and thought that when I grew up I would have Chinese lanterns in my house every Christmas. And then we went to the big shop where Michael and I were to meet Father Christmas. The smiling red- clad man sat on a big red chair but none of the children dared go near him. He smelt just like the men on the night of baking the Christmas cakes.
Timidly, I sat on his lap and asked if I could have a new dress, just like my mother had told me to
"Have you been a good girl? "
I said "No" and started to cry.
I was afraid of telling a lie because I had taken two biscuits when my mother had said I could have one, and that would be a sin and Our Lady would not be pleased with me.
Father Christmas was distraught.
He asked if I had gone to confession. I told him that I had. And he said he wasn't sure about me, but he would have to talk to my mother
Michael was next. He asked for a train set and Father Christmas got very mad and said he was a very selfish little boy with his mother working so hard to get the money to send him to school, and why didn't he ask for a coat and hat like a sensible child, and he deserved to have the devilment beaten out of him.
The whole store was in an uproar and we left in shame, Michael wailing like a Banshee.
At school, we made drawings of the holy family and colored them with crayons and cut them out and pasted them to cardboard and had our own little nativity set to take home
"Mine's bigger than yours"
"That's because you put a dog and you are not supposed to."
"What's that big thing at the back?"
"That's a camel"
"I never saw a camel like that"
"We don't have camels in Ireland"
"How do you know what one looks like then?"
‘I've seen them in my dreams"
"Why did you make the lamb blue. Lambs aren't blue"
"Well this one is."
Mrs. Maher told the story of Bethlehem and how cold it was that night that Jesus was born, with snow on the ground and only the breath of a cow and ass to warm him.
Tom Joe McGrath asked if he had been found under a cabbage like the rest of us. And Mrs. Maher said that he had been born in a horse's trough with straw.
"There weren't any horses" Tom Joe protested.
"Maybe it was a camel's trough"
"Must have been a cow's or an ass's."
Bethlehem was a far away mystical place at the end of the world and we sang a hymn about it with great reverence.
As the advent days began to end, my older brothers came home from boarding school at Rockwell college. My mother was so excited. Green curtains were hung on the windows in the parlor. Linen was put to air by the fire and the best bed-spreads were taken out of the closet and the beds made up in the four -bed boys' room. We drove to the college to see the Gilbert and Sullivan that was always put on at Christmas. One year, my brother Frank was the pirate king. I fell in love with opera there and then and the love has remained with me.
The coming home of my brothers was such a glorious time. We had sausages and bacon and eggs for tea in the dining room with the best china all laid out. And later I would lie in my own little bed in my tiny room and listen to the masculine voices coming from the dormitory and feel so secure and warm.
By the last Sunday of Advent fat geese could be seen wondering in the back yard of Tracy's the butchers, unaware of the fate that awaited them. And unruly children taunted them.
Christmas is coming and the geese are getting fat.
Please put a penny in the old man's hat
If you haven't got a penny a halfpenny will do
If you haven't got a half penny, then God bless you
On Christmas Eve, the goose was plucked in the back kitchen and hung over the fire place. The Christmas cake was taken out and decorated with white royal icing with "Happy Christmas " written in red. We went to the woods to pick holly to decorate the house, and the branches were put behind all the pictures in the parlor. It looked so beautiful with the gleaming dark leaves and berries red as blood and the fire crackling in the chimney. And my grandmother arrived saying that we would set the house on fire and couldn't we think of something else to do wrong and my father glancing up from his reading and murmuring about "that bloody woman again. " And shop- keepers delivered ham and whiskey and puddings in Christmas boxes. And the dog threw up the goose feathers.
Before going to bed we set a candle in the kitchen window so that Mary and Joseph would be able to find a place to rest if they needed to come in out of the snow. And I prayed that Mary and Joseph would come to see us instead of Father Christmas coming down the chimney. I had to stay awake to finish off the 4000 Hail Mary's.
And then, the anticipation of falling asleep on Christmas Eve.
My brother Freddy was always the first up on Christmas morning, rooting through the brown bag to see what Father Christmas had left him. One year I got a pink rag doll and a box of watercolor paints. But, I already had a pink rag doll that I got last Christmas. I realized that Santa wanted me to have twins and I introduced the dolls to each other and put them aside to play with after Mass.
The half past eight o clock in the parish church was crowded. Father Callahan talked about how poor Jesus was and that he got no toys when he was born in Bethlehem even though he was god. I felt guilty that I had two dolls and Jesus had none. Mrs. Conway played the organ and we sang "Silent Night" even though it was already day. After Mass everyone said "Happy Christmas" to everyone else and I said "thank you" when they said it to me.
Moll Mullen lived up the hill road in a very small house. I knew that Moll was poor. My mother often used to send me up to her house with food. She had to take care of her brothers and sisters while her mother went to work because her father "was boozing" away their money. Moll repeatedly had to miss school. When she did manage to get there, she had to sit in the dunce's corner because she did not know her lessons. The dunce's corner was far from the fireplace and she stood there shivering. This Christmas morning she was wearing shoes and I wondered if Father Christmas had brought them. But Moll corrected me.
"He doesn't bother with the likes of me."
She had accepted her lot in life of service and never receiving. Perhaps she related to Jesus better than I did.
Breakfast of sausages and eggs and boiling hot sweet tea, but I couldn't eat. I told my mother about Moll. She looked at me thoughtfully.
"Maybe Father Christmas made a mistake. You got two things from him."
I thought of my pretty new doll and how I always wanted twins. But I knew that that doll was not meant for me.
Later my brother Vivian was sent up the hill road with the doll wrapped in newspaper and a note saying
"Father Christmas left this at our house by mistake. He just called to tell us who it was for"
Christmas Day. The delicious smell of the cooking goose, the business of preparing dinner and setting the table. The best linen was laid out in the dining room with the good china and silver. It was a Dickens feast. My mother dished out the goose, ham, mashed potatoes and gravy and cauliflower and then for pudding we had jelly and cream.
The afternoon was spent playing games in the parlor while my grandmother had her once- a -year glass of port and snored. And my father read out loud from Dickens. And after tea when the Christmas cake was cut, my mother played the piano and we all gathered around the fire and sang the old songs: "Annie Laurie" "The Minstral Boy to the War has Gone" and "Danny Boy" and my grandmother cried. And Freddy got the hiccups and Michael wanted to play with his stuff and my grandmother chastised him and said that Father Christmas had been right, and he called her an old fecker , and my father winked at him and said that he must be more respectful of his grandmother.
And then we had more cake and jelly and cream and the grown ups had whiskey.
And the holly berries shone red on the green leaves and the candles flickered. And all was peaceful.
Christmas all over the world. Jesus had been born in Bethlehem, a long way off. Mary and Joseph could never have made it this far. Some day I would go to Bethlehem myself and see where it all happened.
And in Cappawhite all was happiness.
About the Author
Elizabeth McNamer teaches at Rocky Mountain College, Billings, Montana. She is a native of Irealnd. Has published three books and several articles.
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