A dispute with Santa that was never quite resolved

Country Living with Francis Farragher

I’ve always been of the opinion that you shouldn’t hold grudges . . . well at least not for any longer than a few months . . . but there’s an exception to every rule and I have to admit that there’s still an old spleen there between myself and Santa Claus.

In fairness to the old geezer, he never forgot me when times were far more straitened than they are today but I still feel pretty strongly that turning me down, four years-in-a-row for an electric train set, was at best a little thoughtless and at worst sheer bloody-mindedness.

Various cap guns, small trucks carrying lions, footballs and wind-up cars arrived without fail every Christmas morning, but Santa never stretched his budget far enough to splash out on an electric train set.

In the aftermath of Christmas, many months of torturous self-examination were undertaken to establish the root-cause for Santa’s decision not to reward me with what I wanted most as a child.

November and December always seemed to be crammed with ‘good deeds’ I performed around the house like bringing in bags of turf, feeding the hens, looking at the cattle in the far fields and even stretching as far at that most awful of tasks for any young lads – washing the Delph.

Alas, though the previous 10 months could be laced with all sorts of minor misdemeanours such as breaking windows with errant free-kicks, smashing axles on bikes in a series of head-on collisions and sudden unannounced disappearances when some of the more arduous chores had to be done.

January tended to be especially disobedient month as the bitterness over Santa’s ongoing refusal to deliver the train set began to fester well into the New Year. I felt quite justified in undertaking a period of total non-cooperation with anything by way of philanthropic activities . . . if only the bloody train set had arrived, I’d have been a new man for the New Year.

It could be early Summer before I’d finally thaw out and start looking forward to the following Christmas when there was always the chance that this time around, Santa would eventually ‘break the bank’ and deliver that hooting train that we’d see in the toy shops in Galway city every December 8th.

As if things weren’t bad enough, a lad down the road that I considered to be an inferior being to myself on many different levels, took the greatest of pleasure on one St. Stephen’s Day in telling me that Santa had brought him a new green, electric train set and with it came an invitation for a viewing.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.