Happy Christmas – from Ireland!
At long, long last I am sitting down writing stories about Ireland again. I don’t quite know what happened - my life always seems to be busy, so the fact that I haven’t seemed to have had enough hours in each day can’t be the only reason. It was as if, having broken the discipline of writing two or three posts every week, I couldn’t even manage one. …And the longer I left it, the easier it was to go on leaving it.
Yet I miss writing. Not the actual work of it, nor the time it takes, but the way it leaves one ‘cleansed’, and a little clearer in the head. Having to put words on something forces me to analyse it. Instead I’ve been analysing things in my head (which gets very cluttered!), or through talking to friends. And while, for me, talking to friends is always a good way to help sort something out, the challenge of a clean page – which isn’t biased in anyone’s favour, as friends are – is also a necessary part of the ‘cure’.
There, you see, already it’s happening. I’m talking about ‘cures’, which implies there has been something wrong. And there has been. We’ve just lived through one of those unrequited love things in our house that can cause havoc among housemates. It was one of the reasons I haven’t been writing this blog, because it’s hard enough to love deeply and not be loved in return: you don’t need the world to know about it, too.
It’s over now, sorted by dint of a lot of talking and explaining and a lot of support from the rest of the house family. But for a while it took over our house, and I’m very relieved to be going into Christmas with a household at peace with each other.
There will be seven of us for our ‘first Christmas dinner’ tomorrow night - Gint from Latvia, Wojtek from Poland, Maria from Germany, Renata and Pavel from the Czech Republic, Gail from County Monaghan, and myself. Gail is not living with us anymore, but is coming because Pavel – with whom she shared the house two years ago, as well as Jan and Daniel – is ‘home’ from the Czech Republic to celebrate Christmas here with us, and with his girlfriend, Renata, who has been living with us for the past four weeks.
Maria is leaving for Germany on Christmas Eve, returning January 1, which is why we are celebrating a night early. Our second Christmas dinner will be on Christmas Eve night, when it is celebrated all over mainland Europe, and there will only be four of us. Gail will have returned to Monaghan for Christmas, and Wojtek is celebrating with his new girlfriend - isn’t that nice?! On Christmas Day, 25th, which is when we really celebrate in Ireland, I will spend a lot more time with my ‘blood family’, who come to visit in the morning and then I go to my sister’s in Wicklow for dinner in the evening.
Although Gint leaves on December 28 for a holiday in Italy visiting Michele (who was with us last Christmas), returning January 3, and Renata and Pavel go back for good to the Czech Republic on December 30 (Renata’s six weeks holidays, which she used to study English in Ireland, is up), we are still not advertising for anyone to replace Rasa from Lithuania who got a new job in Dublin and moved out. We’ve taken up every bit of space in this house (Renata and Pavel are in the attic), and emotionally it’s been claustrophobic, too. The house – and us – needs to breath a little…
…But it will have to wait until after the 24th, at least, to do it! Tonight I’m going shopping with a list as long as my arm for the food and drink we finally agreed on (after much compromise and laughter) for our dinner tomorrow night, and our dinner on the 24th. I’m a vegetarian, the others are not. Maria is allergic to a lot of foods – like potatoes. We wanted to try to include some traditional dishes from the cultures represented in our house. Put all of those things together and you have quite a challenge!
It was resolved, after several high level conferences between Renata, Maria, and myself – by deciding on fish (to be chosen and purchase by Renata and Pavel tomorrow morning) in a white wine sauce and potato salad (the second very necessary ingredient in a traditional Czech Christmas meal), with rice as the main ‘carnivore’ dish. Maria will avoid the potato salad, but we’ll have a green salad to replace it. I will avoid the fish, but I’m doing a separate vegetable risotto to get my share of the white wine in the cooking! All of us will have Christmas pudding (home made by a lady in Gorey, County Wexford) with custard, which none of the others have tasted, except Gint because he’s been here longest, but which to me is an essential addition to Christmas pudding.
On the 23rd also, we’ll exchange gifts. This year we decided to go for a Chriskindel, which in Ireland means everyone’s name goes into a hat and you buy for whoever’s name you draw. In Germany, they’ve never heard of this strange custom, Maria says… In Germany, the Christchild (Chriskindel) brings gifts to the little children, and no ’names in hat’ is involved!
It’s not only the food – like Chinese food and Italian food – that gets changed when it emigrates!
For our second Christmas dinner, we’re having pasta with blue cheese and broccoli and walnuts in cream – and not an Italian in the house. The rationale behind this one is that we’ll have had rice the night before, our cooker isn’t big enough to cook lots of potatoes as well as everything else, and we all like pasta! We’ll finish off with mince pies and cream.
And there will be wine, and probably beer, and certainly some Lithuanian liqueurs which were given us as a gift by my friend, Fran’s, husband!
And at midnight the youngest person in the house (Renata, I suspect) will place the Baby in our crib.
And we’ll have candles and an open fire to go with our already decorated (by Maria, Renata, and Gint on one side, and me, on the other, when I realised they’d left the other half naked) Christmas tree.
I’m looking forward to it, and I wish for you the same anticipation, and the same sense of belonging – particularly all those who have ever lived in this house.
Happy Christmas to you all from Ireland!