Ger Matt Duxbury, Boston
Christmas in Connemara was always something special — a time for family to gather, with two weeks set aside for each other rather than work. I'd look forward to the stream of relatives and friends making the trip from England, and the house would soon fill with familiar faces.
The parties and sing-songs with neighbours were highlights, even though not all of us could carry a tune (not talking about the neighbours). Those traditions have travelled with me to Boston, shared with my wife, children, and loved ones. The singing voices are no better there, but the company is just as good. There's nothing like going home for Christmas and having the craic with the Connemara locals. I always enjoyed stopping in with Martin Leigh, who took me in every summer when I was a boy. They'd call it summer camp now, but back then, it meant drawing in hay with the horse. Martin was good to me, and I never forgot it. My old friend, the late Seamus Mannion, would join me in reminiscing whenever I visited home from America. We'd catch up, visiting Doonloughan and the villages in his travelling shop, and remember when things were simpler. I hope the Irish traditions will keep going in Ballyconneely and Clifden this Christmas and for many years to come.
Ronán Noone Weymouth, Boston
The first memory is Canon T hosting midnight Mass, and the choir breaking into "The First Noel" as it ended. The Canon would call on the congregation to join in. The town, in unison, sang. Their voices rolling over the pews, out into the Bens, across the bogs, rising to the heavens. You could spot a family amid the rows of seats, dressed in their best, crumpled in beside each other. Your friends, your fancies, their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters — for the first time, possibly the only time, every year — gathered together, pew by pew, as one town, in one space. The firsts and seconds in the choir measured their lines. Their voices lifted the carol into something ethereal, ringing in our ears as we slipped out into the black night.
On St. Stephen's, you'd see the gang again, a gathering of heads who left and returned for Christmas, in the downstairs of Humptys. Walking around the town in the in-between days from Christmas to New Year's — you could feel a buzz in the air. A crackling energy. Often the weather was rocky, then calm, and the smoke from the chimneys hovered like wisps of bundled dark air. The lights dangled, shimmering, rolling back and forth, latched between houses around the town. Someone would often say, "We should leave them up all year round. They make you feel happy."
The dinner, always "the turkey", and three days in the leftovers, before it was back to regular cooking. The RTÉ Guide sat on the side table beside the chair, beside the couch, in front of the TV, riffled through and stained. The family on Christmas night, locked in for Superman 1 or 2, or maybe it was Die Hard 1 or 2 — whatever it was, it was talked about from the minute the Guide came out.
And then there was the call from someone you hadn't seen in years, wanting to go for coffee in EJ's — that turned into pints, that turned into laughs and memories and "so good to see you," and "when are you off," and "we'll stay in touch." Maybe you do and maybe you don't. But that memory isn't just you and the friend sitting on the high stool. It's the whole, enveloping Christmas reconnection to everything that formed you.