Nollaig Shona Duit

null-ig hun-a dit.

Growing up we celebrated Christmas as a nuclear family.  Traveling to Minnesota in the dead of winter was not an option.  But Christmas was still a time to celebrate family.  

The season would start with the advent wreath.   Lighting one more candle each week .... three pink and one purple.... as we counted down to Christmas.  We took turns with the lighting, but the youngest always went first.  In Ireland it was the tradition that the youngest lit the Christmas Candle.






Every year we would receive the special box from Grammy English.  The Spritz cookies, green trees with those (now outlawed) silver balls, meant Christmas was near.  In the early years there were also homemade pajamas, a tradition carried on by Mom when she became a Grandma.   

Christmas music filled the air.  A favorite record was the one brought back from Europe in 1956.  I remember listening to the "Littlest Angel" over and over 

To the dismay of some of us, we always waited until Christmas Eve to put up the Christmas tree.  This was Dad's tradition.  We would get the tree either that day or maybe a day or two before at the nearest lot.  We would decorate, and then there was the tinsel ... put on one piece at a time!!!  By  the time I was in high school Dad was busier than ever and often left the tree decorating to the rest of us.  That piece by piece tradition was one we happily abandoned, throwing on clumps was much more fun.

As I was looking at Irish Christmas Traditions to see what had filtered through the years to our household, one site stressed that traditionally Christmas in Ireland began on Christmas Eve and continued until the Epiphany.  So the Christmas Eve tree was perhaps one of our Irish traditions.

There were others.  The Christmas Candle.  It wasn't an every year tradition, but I remember putting it in the window to welcome travelers when I was small, and particularly burning it each night the year that Dad was overseas during the Suez Crisis.  During Penal Times the candle indicated a safe place for priests to perform mass.  Tradition said the candle should be lit by the youngest member of the household and extinguished only by a girl named Mary.  In Ireland that was probably easy, there were a lot of Mary's but none in our house and I'm sure we all would have argued if the same person got to light the candle all the time!!!

I also remember the extra place at the table, I think that one fell by the wayside as well, perhaps when the family got so big, or was it maybe because we so often seemed to have and extra person or two for dinner.  I often think about those strays when we have our wonderful Thanksgiving feasts at Andi's....filled with new and interesting people each year.  

While decorating with Holly is claimed to be or Irish origin by some, it is a tradition that might date a bit earlier.  The celebration of Saturnalia, a Roman festival derived from the farm-related rituals of midwinter and the winter solstice. That celebration included decorating with holly and the giving of gifts, definitely a precursor of current Christmas festivities.  The Irish, however, did start the tradition of rings of holly on the door.  Those wreathes did not come down until the Epiphany.

In looking at origins of Christmas, it is interesting to note that Yule was a Scandinavian fertility God, decorating with wreathes and holly is considered a Wicca custom, Druids used mistletoe, Thor and Odin joined St. Nicholas in giving out gifts, and the Indo-Iranian deity Mithras celebrated the birth of the sun on Dec 25.

Another Irish custom that we followed was having mince pies for Christmas.  It is another custom that disappeared from our house over time, most likely because it was NOBODY'S favorite.

Celtic Woman - Wexford Carol