By Tom Nestor

 

My older brother broke his fast on Christmas. All he did was take a lick from the chocolate bar that Santa Claus brought along with a new cardigan. But as my mother said, lick or no lick, you’ve broke your fast that’s the holly all of it now. He wouldn’t be going up to the altar to get communion like all the children will.

My mother is raging. She will be shamed this Christmas morning. An’ of course, she would be the only one that was accountable, whatever that meant. They were all looking at my brother inside in the church, staring at him, and he the only one in the pew while all the others went to the rails. Every pew was at it except the fellas just inside the main door who came late, just in time for the three Hail Marys.

“No matter who broke the pledge,” my mother kept saying, “‘twill all fall on me’. Do you think that himself would be getting the looks in the faces that she was getting? A course not, they were saying, poor man, wasn’t he to be pitied, you could see it in their faces.”

So this is it from now on. My mother is going to write to Santa Claus and tell him, no more of it, no chocolate, no sweets, or a lozenge either. And that’s the holy all of it now. Not even a sweet crumb.

So here we are again now, sitting round a fire that was never lighted this morning. Every other day, my mother looks after the fire but my father takes over on Christmas morning. Don’t ye be trying to stir up a piece of reddened turf, hear me now? That piece of red could start up when we’re above in the church. Would ye like to come down here after mass and see ye’er lovely house burned to the ground.

Whose lovely house my mother would ask, and ‘himself’ as we call him, would make a face and then a little smile. It made her laugh and my father would turn up his lips first and then shake his head.

“Fierce out there,” himself said, when he came in from the yard, “frost up to your ankles.”

Every Christmas day, my elder brother and my sister set out wearing everyday boots and carry the good ones in a messenger bag. When we get near to the church we put the good shoes on and hide the messenger bags under the privet bush as you come by the back gate.

Same thing after Mass, into the bag with the good ones, back to the old and worn.

She had sent him a letter. No sweets at all, no bulls-eyes, no chocolate at all, at all, nor a biscuit either, that would break the fast like all the others.
I don’t know if Santa reads all them letters, at all, at all. I sent off a letter last year, my mother wrote it. I looked for a chariot, the kind that I saw in Houlihan’s shop in the town, and a mouth organ. Do you think that’s what I got?

No way.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own Christmas Double Issue