A cosy nostalgia is embedded in Christmas marketing every year: be it radio advertisements featuring men sentimentally recalling getting their first train set from their fathers or television ads of families reunited on Christmas Eve.
Generally, these soft-focused confectioneries cost fortunes to make, but occasionally a magical narrative is conjured up for a tiny sum – like this year when a £100 (€117) home-made Christmas ad for a little Welsh hardware shop became a viral YouTube hit.
Although they wring every drop of emotion, the stories these ads tell are not necessarily untrue. But they can’t show the full truth about Christmas, as Christmas is different for every family.
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Because random things occur on random days, the memories that Christmas conjures up may be tragic or happy.
People are born every day and die every day: at Christmas time like any other.
People think the word nostalgia represents a rose-tinted yearning. But the past is rarely simple and the word nostalgia comes from the combination of two Greek words – the words for “homecoming” and “pain”.
Although the faces that gather around my table at Christmas have changed over time, my memories of Christmas are overwhelming happy.
One piece of advice I would, however, give to parents of excited five year olds is not to buy presents that require assembling in hundreds of pieces on Christmas night, unless you wish your memories to be exhausting also.
For many people, having our own children allows us the chance to live the magic of Christmas twice.
Once as a child yourself and then through witnessing your own children’s palpable excitement, too filled with anticipation to sleep on Christmas Eve and waking you at dawn in their eagerness to see what waits for them under the tree downstairs.
I am cognisant that, for many families, there may be little under the tree and there may be no downstairs for families living in emergency accommodation.
I can only imagine the pressure such parents feel, bombarded by advisers trying to emotionally blackmail them into spending money they don’t possess to somehow make their Christmas “perfect.”
But perfection doesn’t exist. Looking back, few children remember what actual presents they were given: they recall the ceremony of giving, the sense of being enveloped by love when climbing into a parent’s bed.
They remember being overwhelmed by a sense of occasion around a day which is so eagerly anticipated they don’t possess the vocabulary to make sense of it, feeling part of a seemingly unbreakable circle of love.
But at times even the most apparently unbreakable bonds can be broken.
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the death of my mother, Bridie Bolger, on the shortest day of the year.
Because I was only 10, people shielded me from the seriousness of her condition.
Death had not entered my lexicon and I had no concept of how the most precious person in my life could be taken from me, four days from Christmas.
My older siblings knew how badly her brain operation had gone, after doctors assured her that she would be home with her family by Christmas.
Fifty years later, I can still remember everything about that day that irrevocably split my childhood in two. I recall strangers in the corridor of the hospital trying to console us when we were beyond consolation.
I recall uncles and aunts arriving from English cities, amid throngs of joyous emigrants returning by boat, to bury their sister and catch a Christmas Eve sailing back to families in Luton and Leicester.
I recall my older siblings assuring me they would mind me as closely as any parent. For a half century they have been true to their word: always there for me in good times and bad.
Christmas is a time of joy, just like those manufactured advertisements suggest. But it can be a time of sadness too.
For several people I know, and thousands I don’t, this will be the first Christmas without their partners. Even if it is the 20th Christmas without someone, the ache of absence doesn’t recede – or the wish to raise a glass to absent friends.
But I wish to raise a glass too to how an absence can remain a constant presence in a family’s life. I believe our mother’s loss at Christmas only bound my siblings closer together.
For 50 years we have gathered in harmony to celebrate the legacy of her curtailed life, to remember her love for us and share our news of the past year.
Sadly, there will be absences in our gathering this year – other lives curtailed far too young – but the four inconsolable siblings in that hospital corridor are still here, still close in ways that perhaps we might not have been, if we had all not needed to fill that void she left.
Religious people might say she is looking down on us. I avoid easy consolations. I just think her love was so strong it touches us still.
I suspect many families feel similarly blessed by absences that remain ever present: absences always remembered at Christmas, included in stories, made part of the celebration that occurs when a family gather together, united by shared memories.
Amid the talk and laughter the young woman who died this day 50 years ago will be remembered this Christmas as part of our lives, as the person who most shaped us into who we became. Let’s raise a glass to absent friends.
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Home » Analysis & Comment » Dermot Bolger: 'A toast to all the absent friends … and a love that still touches us'
Dermot Bolger: 'A toast to all the absent friends … and a love that still touches us'
A cosy nostalgia is embedded in Christmas marketing every year: be it radio advertisements featuring men sentimentally recalling getting their first train set from their fathers or television ads of families reunited on Christmas Eve.
Generally, these soft-focused confectioneries cost fortunes to make, but occasionally a magical narrative is conjured up for a tiny sum – like this year when a £100 (€117) home-made Christmas ad for a little Welsh hardware shop became a viral YouTube hit.
Although they wring every drop of emotion, the stories these ads tell are not necessarily untrue. But they can’t show the full truth about Christmas, as Christmas is different for every family.
Please log in or register with Independent.ie for free access to this article.
Log In
New to Independent.ie? Create an account
Because random things occur on random days, the memories that Christmas conjures up may be tragic or happy.
People are born every day and die every day: at Christmas time like any other.
People think the word nostalgia represents a rose-tinted yearning. But the past is rarely simple and the word nostalgia comes from the combination of two Greek words – the words for “homecoming” and “pain”.
Although the faces that gather around my table at Christmas have changed over time, my memories of Christmas are overwhelming happy.
One piece of advice I would, however, give to parents of excited five year olds is not to buy presents that require assembling in hundreds of pieces on Christmas night, unless you wish your memories to be exhausting also.
For many people, having our own children allows us the chance to live the magic of Christmas twice.
Once as a child yourself and then through witnessing your own children’s palpable excitement, too filled with anticipation to sleep on Christmas Eve and waking you at dawn in their eagerness to see what waits for them under the tree downstairs.
I am cognisant that, for many families, there may be little under the tree and there may be no downstairs for families living in emergency accommodation.
I can only imagine the pressure such parents feel, bombarded by advisers trying to emotionally blackmail them into spending money they don’t possess to somehow make their Christmas “perfect.”
But perfection doesn’t exist. Looking back, few children remember what actual presents they were given: they recall the ceremony of giving, the sense of being enveloped by love when climbing into a parent’s bed.
They remember being overwhelmed by a sense of occasion around a day which is so eagerly anticipated they don’t possess the vocabulary to make sense of it, feeling part of a seemingly unbreakable circle of love.
But at times even the most apparently unbreakable bonds can be broken.
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the death of my mother, Bridie Bolger, on the shortest day of the year.
Because I was only 10, people shielded me from the seriousness of her condition.
Death had not entered my lexicon and I had no concept of how the most precious person in my life could be taken from me, four days from Christmas.
My older siblings knew how badly her brain operation had gone, after doctors assured her that she would be home with her family by Christmas.
Fifty years later, I can still remember everything about that day that irrevocably split my childhood in two. I recall strangers in the corridor of the hospital trying to console us when we were beyond consolation.
I recall uncles and aunts arriving from English cities, amid throngs of joyous emigrants returning by boat, to bury their sister and catch a Christmas Eve sailing back to families in Luton and Leicester.
I recall my older siblings assuring me they would mind me as closely as any parent. For a half century they have been true to their word: always there for me in good times and bad.
Christmas is a time of joy, just like those manufactured advertisements suggest. But it can be a time of sadness too.
For several people I know, and thousands I don’t, this will be the first Christmas without their partners. Even if it is the 20th Christmas without someone, the ache of absence doesn’t recede – or the wish to raise a glass to absent friends.
But I wish to raise a glass too to how an absence can remain a constant presence in a family’s life. I believe our mother’s loss at Christmas only bound my siblings closer together.
For 50 years we have gathered in harmony to celebrate the legacy of her curtailed life, to remember her love for us and share our news of the past year.
Sadly, there will be absences in our gathering this year – other lives curtailed far too young – but the four inconsolable siblings in that hospital corridor are still here, still close in ways that perhaps we might not have been, if we had all not needed to fill that void she left.
Religious people might say she is looking down on us. I avoid easy consolations. I just think her love was so strong it touches us still.
I suspect many families feel similarly blessed by absences that remain ever present: absences always remembered at Christmas, included in stories, made part of the celebration that occurs when a family gather together, united by shared memories.
Amid the talk and laughter the young woman who died this day 50 years ago will be remembered this Christmas as part of our lives, as the person who most shaped us into who we became. Let’s raise a glass to absent friends.
Source: Read Full Article