My father was a man who could turn his hand to any task – any task bar cooking, that is. On this date, January 6, his annual venture into the uncharted realm of the culinary arts was always identified by a lingering aroma of badly burned bacon in our house.
Being the only day of the year the Old Man strayed into the unfamiliar precincts of the kitchen on Women’s Little Christmas, it invariably resulted in a dining disaster of ‘Fawlty Towers’-like proportions complete with billowing smoke, nuked meat, unrecognisable vegetables and a cavalcade of cracked pottery. On the fateful evening that Mum and her sisters headed out to the local hotel for their annual parole from housework, my father’s unregulated optimism was allowed full gastronomic rein. Every year the same dish – bacon and cabbage, every year the same result – food so badly burnt the entire kitchen needed a repaint. And despite our annual caution to him on the previous year’s horrors, he remained immune to criticism, always adding with a shrug: “How hard can it be?”
For a man whose heifers were noted by their superior condition on market day, it was clear his husbandry stretched no further than beasts of the four-legged category. Mum always maintained he burnt the bacon on purpose – a reminder of the demarcation line between who ran the house and who ran the farm. Growing up in the country with nary a pizza delivery nor handy chipper for salvation, that solitary evening devoid of maternal influence became a childhood memory better in the telling than the experience.
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Nollaig na mBan, like many of our cultural milestones, dates back to a time where gender roles observed a strict code determined by the society of the day. Particular to Ireland, its roots grew from man’s historic position as the breadwinner and women’s as the homemaker – a duty roster allowing just a single night’s freedom on the last day of Christmas in recognition of the constant toil that was the female lot for the preceding 11. In a not-so-long-ago Ireland, women were only allowed into pubs on that solitary evening, and then directed straight to the snug. Even up to the 1960s, women would have generally opted for the polite surrounds of hotel dining rooms with their sisters or relatives, and those who dared darken the door of public houses labelled ‘loose’ or ‘foreign’.
Discretion was paramount, as if the close proximity of female flesh and alcohol might produce a combustible combination. The notion of wild women cavorting around the cobblestones of Temple Bar complete with spandex skirts, bunny ears and quart bottles of tequila would have surely meant instant deportation to Van Diemen’s land.
Though the women of 2020 may deservedly glory in the boisterous emancipation writ large on January 6, they should raise a glass in gracious gratitude to the grandmothers who lit this joyous bonfire of sisterhood.
Whispering resolutions among the tombstones
WHENEVER possible, I visit the family grave on January 1. On that beautifully mild beginning to 2020, the cemetery was a blissfully quiet domain.
Gazing at the names etched in stone and lost in thought about those people I loved so much, a noise distracted my reverie. A few rows away two men were digging a fresh grave. Standing there, healthy and strong in that place for which we are all eventually destined, I imagined the words my parents might whisper.
“Seize the day, do good and be happy,” was the instruction softly murmured across the drifts of time. As a resolution for the rest of my days, it says everything.
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Home » Analysis & Comment » Notebook: 'The day 'Little Women' took their leave'
Notebook: 'The day 'Little Women' took their leave'
My father was a man who could turn his hand to any task – any task bar cooking, that is. On this date, January 6, his annual venture into the uncharted realm of the culinary arts was always identified by a lingering aroma of badly burned bacon in our house.
Being the only day of the year the Old Man strayed into the unfamiliar precincts of the kitchen on Women’s Little Christmas, it invariably resulted in a dining disaster of ‘Fawlty Towers’-like proportions complete with billowing smoke, nuked meat, unrecognisable vegetables and a cavalcade of cracked pottery. On the fateful evening that Mum and her sisters headed out to the local hotel for their annual parole from housework, my father’s unregulated optimism was allowed full gastronomic rein. Every year the same dish – bacon and cabbage, every year the same result – food so badly burnt the entire kitchen needed a repaint. And despite our annual caution to him on the previous year’s horrors, he remained immune to criticism, always adding with a shrug: “How hard can it be?”
For a man whose heifers were noted by their superior condition on market day, it was clear his husbandry stretched no further than beasts of the four-legged category. Mum always maintained he burnt the bacon on purpose – a reminder of the demarcation line between who ran the house and who ran the farm. Growing up in the country with nary a pizza delivery nor handy chipper for salvation, that solitary evening devoid of maternal influence became a childhood memory better in the telling than the experience.
Please log in or register with Independent.ie for free access to this article.
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Nollaig na mBan, like many of our cultural milestones, dates back to a time where gender roles observed a strict code determined by the society of the day. Particular to Ireland, its roots grew from man’s historic position as the breadwinner and women’s as the homemaker – a duty roster allowing just a single night’s freedom on the last day of Christmas in recognition of the constant toil that was the female lot for the preceding 11. In a not-so-long-ago Ireland, women were only allowed into pubs on that solitary evening, and then directed straight to the snug. Even up to the 1960s, women would have generally opted for the polite surrounds of hotel dining rooms with their sisters or relatives, and those who dared darken the door of public houses labelled ‘loose’ or ‘foreign’.
Discretion was paramount, as if the close proximity of female flesh and alcohol might produce a combustible combination. The notion of wild women cavorting around the cobblestones of Temple Bar complete with spandex skirts, bunny ears and quart bottles of tequila would have surely meant instant deportation to Van Diemen’s land.
Though the women of 2020 may deservedly glory in the boisterous emancipation writ large on January 6, they should raise a glass in gracious gratitude to the grandmothers who lit this joyous bonfire of sisterhood.
Whispering resolutions among the tombstones
WHENEVER possible, I visit the family grave on January 1. On that beautifully mild beginning to 2020, the cemetery was a blissfully quiet domain.
Gazing at the names etched in stone and lost in thought about those people I loved so much, a noise distracted my reverie. A few rows away two men were digging a fresh grave. Standing there, healthy and strong in that place for which we are all eventually destined, I imagined the words my parents might whisper.
“Seize the day, do good and be happy,” was the instruction softly murmured across the drifts of time. As a resolution for the rest of my days, it says everything.
Source: Read Full Article