An Irish Christmas Feast (47 page)

I wish I had the rind I left behind

And the hag I wouldn't kiss.

I heard sentiments like these, or in some way resembling these, from a very old man on a Christmas Eve night halfway through the final century of the last millennium. He wasn't bemoaning his lot and, as I recalled at the time, he wasn't a natural grouser. What he was really trying to say was that he did not know when he was well off and that I should benefit from his experience and always appreciate the time that was in it in order that I might never think of the rind I might have left behind or the hag I wouldn't kiss.

I was twenty years old at the time and awaiting my friends in an ancient public house popular with the young folk of the community. It was a good premises to be in on Christmas Eve. The proprietor approved of song and he approved of things like gallantry and decency and if he frequently took a drop too much he would always remind his critics that it was his own money he was drinking and his own liver he was besieging.

Time passed and, sure enough, my friends arrived, all at the same time and all fairly full of Christmas love and Christmas cheer and Christmas beer.

I passed on the old man's words. My friends understood and we made up a modest sum which we offered him. He accepted it the way a highly successful forward accepts an expected pass in front of an open goal. I am happy to be able to report that the contribution made his night. The young men, Tom and Moss and Danny, were the proprietors of open hearts and of pockets that always emptied quickly. They were good men as men go and would not waste a single minute bemoaning the past.

These friends are still to the good as the end of the last millennium approached. They are grey now and a little wrinkled as well as being a bit battered but they are never down and they are deeply appreciative of what's left to them. That, my friends, is the only way to be at Christmas.

On that far-off Christmas Eve we sang many a song and downed many a glass and if we didn't how would publicans prosper and bring up their families and how would breweries hold on to their workers and how would the women at home hear the gossip that can only be heard in public houses. Times have changed and often 'tis the women that bring home the gossip now and that is as it should be.

Our financial reserves would be low after our revels but who cared! We could always dress up as wrenboys on St Stephen's Day and partially banish the emptiness from our pockets.

On our last Christmas Eve of the twentieth century we had mustered enough wisdom over the years to know that Christmas with the wrong jock in the saddle can be a bucking bronco. We don't have the youth for speed nor the endurance for lengthy boozes at our age but we are blessed with the acquired wisdom that every age is a good age if you give it half a chance and that our perceived enemies are not really enemies at all but delusions fashioned by prejudice and mental instability. Our real enemies are ourselves.

But back to my friends on that Christmas Eve fifty years ago. On St Stephen's night we would be meeting our girlfriends and after a brief sojourn in the same public house we would proceed to the Astor Ballroom at the top of the town where Darkie Devine and his Devon Dance Band would be playing from nine o'clock in the night until three o'clock in the morning. We would be made welcome to these far-off Terpsichorean revels by the simple expedient of forking out the sum of three shillings apiece and for this, as Byron put it, there would be:

No sleep till morn when youth and pleasure meet

To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

As I sit here writing I am very much aware that the theme for another is being hatched all over this long-suffering, much-abused sphere. It simply says, ‘no more domination for me if you please. Do not order me about ever again. Do not murder or main me or starve me or indoctrinate me as you've been doing for so long. There has to be a better way.'

Today I celebrate my seventy-first Christmas Eve aboard this topsy-turvy planet we have christened Earth. It's been a good barque to me although my late mother used to say that I would never really take off until I was banned.

In spite of hiccoughs, assorted misfortunes, minor catastrophes and misunderstandings I'm still aboard. I was marooned a good few times all right and I fell overboard several times but was always hauled back aboard by my fellow-mariners when all seemed lost.

Christmas Eve always arrives at the town of Listowel like Aurora herself. Aurora stuns the intellectuals with her brightness but she is loved by poets and balladeers who serenade her drunk and sober. Aurora lights up the streets and squares and alley-ways in this little town. She opens tightly closed purses and softens the hardest of hearts. She brings tears too but they are tears of joy and they are the prelude to love and laughter.

Two thousand years is a mighty long time but the memory of the man whose birthday we celebrate is dearer and more cherished than ever.

On the cross he forgave the thief by his side and said to him, ‘This day you will be with me in paradise.' To me those are the most important words ever uttered because in them is hope of salvation for every man.

Of human lines there are many that I cherish too and with the new millennium Tennyson comes to mind with the most appropriate quote of all:

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land;

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

A happy Christmas now and the grace of God to all my readers and to all those near and dear to them and to all travellers whoever or wherever they may be and please change those of evil intent to good.

John B. Keane, one of Ireland's most prolific and respected literary figures, died on 30 May 2002 at the age of 73, after a long and difficult battle with cancer. John B. Keane was born in 1928 in Listowel, County Kerry and it was here that he spent his literary career, running a pub which provided him with inspiration for his characters and ideas.

His first play,
Sive
, was presented by the Listowel Drama Group and won the All-Ireland Drama Festival in 1959. It was followed by another success,
Sharon's Grave
, in 1960.
The Field
(1965) and
Big Maggie
(1969), are widely regarded as classics of the modern Irish stage and jewels in a crown which includes such popular hits as
Many Young Men of Twenty, The Man from Clare
,
Moll
,
The Chastitute
and
The Year of the Hiker.
His large canon of plays have been seen abroad in cities as far afield as Moscow and Los Angeles.
Big Maggie
ran on Broadway for over two months in 1982 and
The Field
was adapted into an Oscar-winning Hollywood film, starring Brenda Fricker and Richard Harris, in 1991.

But it was not just in his plays that John B. Keane managed to portray all aspects of humanity with both wit and truth. He also wrote many fine novels, including
The Contractors,
A High Meadow
and
Durango
.
Durango
was adapted for the big screen, starring Brenda Fricker and Patrick Bergin. A writer of essays, short stories and letters, his humorous words live on in
Celebrated Letters of John B. Keane, More Celebrated Letters, The Best of John B. Keane
and
The Short Stories of John B. Keane
. In 1987 John B. Keane received a special award for his enduring place in Irish life and letters from the
Sunday Independent/
Irish Life. In that year he also won a
Sunday Tribune
Arts Award and in 1988 he was chosen as the recipient of the Irish-American Fund Award for Literature. In 1999 he was presented with a Gradam medal, the Abbey Theatre's highest award.

He was a member of Aosdana and the recipient of honorary doctorates from Trinity College, Dublin, Limerick University and Marymount College, New York. John B. Keane remains one of Mercier's best-loved and best-selling authors.