Rory FitzgeraldThe kids wanted to know what Christmas was like in “the olden days”, that is, when I was a boy. “Come on!” I said indignantly, “the 1980s is not the olden days!” But they insisted that it was.
Time is relative, I suppose. The end of the 1980s happened over 24 years ago – over six times the lifetime of a four-year-old. Scaling that up for a 40-year-old, six times their lifetime is 240 years ago, which is 1775. On this basis, it is fair for them to perceive the 1980s as “the olden days”, relatively speaking that is.
Christmas is a time when we all slip wantonly into nostalgia. Christmas cards do not feature images of modern Christmases, such as tailbacks on the M1 to Newry, ‘cyber Monday’, or thronged shopping centres. Rather they hearken back to an idealised past. We each do the same.
Our individual memories of childhood Christmases tantalise us even as adults, and we still work hard to catch fleeting glimpses that same childhood Christmas magic.
Our Christmas traditions are the traps we set for Christmas magic. They are laid carefully – almost superstitiously. They are baited with the same dusty old ornaments that worked so well before. Each family has its own formula, one swears by special Christmas breakfasts, another has its dinner on Christmas Eve, others carefully garland an ancient and beloved family crib.
The important thing is that we continue to do the same thing each year, with only small variance. Otherwise, we fear, the Christmas magic could be lost forever.
There were ructions in our extended family this year when the oldies, as we now call them, tried to cancel the traditional Christmas day family event. Since we cousins were kids, in the “olden days” of the 1980s, these had been observed religiously.
All the cousins, uncles and aunts on my mother’s side of the family gathered in one house for a get-together. I was 27 before I missed one, and even then a cardboard cut-out of me was put in the corner of the room and I rang in from Australia.
The oldies were rightly excoriated by the cousins for this brazen attempt to ruin Christmas. Justifiable, if tongue-in-cheek, comparisons were made to Cromwell and the puritan’s 17th Century attempts to ban Christmas celebrations. In open rebellion, the cousins immediately reinstated the event at a house belonging to the younger generation. Childhood Christmas traditions may not be trifled with.
Christmas is a time when we seek continuity. We want to fill it with the same joyful things we had, brightly lit trees, advent calendars, carols, a Christmas candle, mince pies, Christmas crackers, letters to Santa and the whole panoply of Christmas paraphernalia. Nothing may be omitted for fear of breaking the spell.
That way, when the kids ask what Christmas was like in the olden days, we want to be able to say, “It was just like this”. And we hope that they may in time say the same to their children, and so the Christmas magic may continue on into the future. We do this so that the eyes of children not yet born may light up in wonder, just as ours once did.