Too young to realise that this was pure happiness

Country Living with Francis Farragher

While on balance, Santa Claus has to be regarded as a good natured ‘ould sod’, talk of his imminent arrival always seemed to ignite a worrying mixture of joy, fear and trepidation in young minds.  Being from an era when there were very few if any trips to see the ‘shop Santa Clauses’, it really was all about the real thing on Christmas Eve night when there were always dire warnings issued about waking up in the middle of the night and disturbing the arrival of the once-a-year visitor from the North Pole.

Sleep rarely came easy on Christmas Eve night, and when it did, it was often broken by a mixture of sheer anxiety and the howling of the West wind against walls unfamiliar with the insulation of today, and windows that were prone to rattle as the venom of the gales increased.

There were nights, too, when the real temptation existed to sneak down the stairs and curl up beside the range like an old cat in the hope of working out the mechanics of how this big man with the red suit could make his way down a chimney that narrowed at the point where it mated with the old Stanley.

Acts of such bravery always seemed to end at the top of the old stairs, whose steps led into the mid-Winter darkness of the kitchen and the hobs of the range where Santa, without fail, would leave his presents.

That perch at the top of the stairs, though, always seemed to set off some kind of alarm bells with the man and woman of the house, with one of them always tending to wake up just at the point when the first steps into the world of Santa Claus land were about to be taken.

“What are you at. If you don’t go back to bed, he won’t come at all to you. Hop it,” was always the order from the mother, not issued with any sense of anger, but yet there was a firmness of tone that could not be ignored. “I was just wondering had he come yet. Is it near morning yet,” I replied, but this was met with the pointing of a rigid thumb towards my bedroom door.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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