Eamon Kelly's 1920s Christmas Customs, a poem and a photo for Christmas '17

Love consists not in looking at one another but in looking together in the same direction.
Khalil Gibran

Photo taken in The Gap of Dunloe by Chris Grayson

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Eamon Kelly Remembers Christmas Long Ago

.....Then we’d be praying for night to fall. for you couldn’t see the right effect until the candles were lit. The honour would fall to the youngest in the house. The father would lift the child up saying “In the name of The Father, The Son….” And when the child had blessed himself, he would put the lighting spill to the candle, and from that candle the other candles would be lit, and he’s be half daft with excitement, enjoying the blaze of light, and running fro the rooms into the kitchen and out into the yard to see what the effect was like from the outside. When we’d get tired of looking at the candles in our own windows, we’d turn and try to name the neighbours’ houses as the bunches of lights came on, two windows here and three windows there, across the dark countryside and away up to the foot of the hills. And sure as anything, someone would be late and we’d rush in to my mother saying, ”Faith then there’s no light on yet in Rossacrew!”

“Go n ye’re knees,” my mother would say. The time she’d pick for the rosary, just when the salt ling was ready and the white onion sauce and the potatoes steaming over the fire. But I suppose there’d be no religion in the world only for the women. The rosary in our house did not end at five decades. Not at all, after the Hail Holy Queen our mother would start into the trimmings

“Come Holy Ghost, send down those beams,

Which sweetly flow in silver streams.”

She’d pray for everyone in sickness and in need and the poor souls and the sinful souls who at that very moment was trembling before the judgment seat above. She’d pray for the sailor on the seas. “Protect him from the tempest, O Lord, and bring him safely home.” And the lone traveller on the highway, and, of course, our emigrants, and, last of all, the members of our own family

God bless and save us all

St. Patrick, Bridget and Colmcille

Guard each wall.

May the queen of Heaven

And the angels bright

Keep us and our home

From harm this night.

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A Christmas Poem

Twinkle Twinkle    by Jane Taylor

Twinkle twinkle little star.

How I wonder what you are.

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,

And he nothing shines upon,

Then you show your little light.

Twinkle, twinklw through the night.

Then the traveller in the dark

Thanks you for your tiny spark.

He would not see which way to go,

If you did not twinkle so.

In the dark blue sky you keep,

And often through my curtains peep,

Forr you never shut your eye

Til the sun is in the sky.

As your bright and tiny spark,

Lights the traveller in the dark.

Though I know not what you are

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

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A Welcome Return

Jackie McGillicuddy made a welcome return to his old spot behind the counter at Corbett and Fitzgibbon's. The shop now names McGillicuddy's Toys is run by his son Seán who is with him in the photo which they posted on Twitter.

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Thought for the Season    from Dr. Suess