Women’s Little Christmas ~ Epiphany in Ireland on January 6

 

 

~ Submitted by Andrea Cleghorn

Memories that predate Covid are somehow bathed in the golden glow of nostalgia. We traveled without quick tests, without vaccination cards, without masks. We didn’t live in fear of a quarantine that might last longer than the trip itself. We traveled!

The Twelfth  Night of Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany on the Christan calendar used to mean it was an excuse to party one last time before settling into the freezer of winter. Can we talk about January 6 at the US Capitol? No, not here. Just turn on the news tonight for a replay of Insurrection Day.

When this century was young—after Y2K but before Obama was elected—a packed New Year’s Eve Aer Lingus flight took off from Boston bound for the West of Ireland. The flight attendants bustled up and down the aisles full of good cheer, wearing funny hats, and determined to celebrate even if they had to work. Arriving in Ireland before dawn on January first, I enjoyed the festive mood but assumed I had missed out on Christmas celebrations altogether.

I was wrong.

I got through customs easily, but the rental car pickup not so much. Not one but two of the economy class vehicles on offer revealed bad brakes before I got out of the parking lot, so I went up to the counter a third time. The disgruntled clerk handed me the keys to a boat—but a boat that stopped promptly and silently when I stepped on the brake pedal. I took it, hoping that because it was January the traffic on those scenic but scary one-lane roads would be minimal. Taking turns backing up to a lay-by is never an easy maneuver. But I was off to spend some time with my friend Fintan.

It was cold and rainy as I headed toward Limerick. I passed a light-up Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, and Santa waving a welcome to travelers on the airport exit road. I was bound for County Waterford in the Sunny Southeast. That may sound ludicrous, but the eastern part of the country does get about half the yearly rainfall of the Southwest. Both coasts’ precipitation can be measured in feet, but, remember,  no one goes to Ireland for the beautiful weather.

I worked my way across Ireland to the market town of Dungarvan and beyond to the smallest Gaeltecht [Gaelic Irish-speaking] area in Ireland, the town of An Rinn, or Ring in English. Ring is well-known for its Irish language college, and students of all ages take classes there. I passed the church, the post office, Mooney’s Bar, and the Spar convenience shop, around the bend and down the hill to the even tinier townland of Ballynagaul, with its handful of houses and a pub with a giant anchor out in front.

As I got to my destination, swimmers were just coming up the lane from the pier after an L Street Brownies-style chilly New Year’s dip in the Irish Sea. They struggled up the hill wearing towels, blankets, and whatever else they could find.

Night arrives early so close to the winter solstice and by 3 the roofline of the Tigh an Ceol (translation: House of Music), was outlined in red lights for the holiday. The adjacent council houses were decorated with wreaths and icicles.  I was glad to be inside, warming up in front of a blazing fireplace.

In Ireland, decorations typically go up Dec. 8, a holy day, but trimming the tree itself is often saved for Christmas Eve. Though I had missed Dec. 25 and the following St. Stephen’s Day on the 26^th, I was there in time for the Twelfth Night of Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany, so on January 6 the two of us took down the Christmas cards and went to a wonderful thatched-roof pub nearby called An Seanachai, meaning The Storyteller. With thick stucco walls and a walk-in fireplace, it is every American’s dream of what a pub should be.

As soon as we walked inside, Fintan asked me if I noticed anything unusual. The mood was light, the volume was high, with lots of boisterous laughter and some singing. I was surprised to notice there was nary a man in sight, not even the requisite depressed guy sitting alone in a corner.

Was it one of the infamous Irish bachelorette hen parties, so outrageous that some villages ban them altogether? No, no signs or obscene references to wedding nights that evening.

“Why are you and two bartenders the only guys here,” I wanted to know.

He told me it was Women’s Little Christmas. Wait a minute: Women’s Little What? It is not a new holiday, in fact, an ancient one usually associated with the rural areas of Ireland. It’s called Nollaig na mBan – pronounced null-egg-nah-mawn in Irish. The English explanation is “it’s been a ton of work, making a nice Christmas for everyone, so let’s turn the kids, the cooking and the house over to the men for one night while we women whoop it up with our sisters, mothers, cousins, grandmothers, and girlfriends.”

In decades past, and not always in the past, women did everything in the house. And just as there was a specific night to put up the decorations, most Irish consider January 6, Twelfth Night, to take them down. women are given the night off from the back-breaking Christmas season. Women’s Little Christmas.

So we had a fine time that night, and Fintan didn’t seem to mind one bit being one of the only men in the house. I had trouble understanding our server at the bar and it had nothing to do with ambient noise. Fintan told me it was because she had switched to speaking English for my benefit. To my ears, she had a heavy accent, and she must have been translating before she spoke. I remembered we were in the heart of the Gaeltacht, after all.

As you do, you end up chatting with other people around you.

One native Dubliner told me she had never celebrated Women’s Christmas until she moved to the West of Ireland. “On that day, the women are thanked and their men pay for the night out. So about 60 of us meet at a restaurant and play music, sing, and dance with each other.”

Joan Hogan grew up on a dairy farm near Tralee in County Kerry, and remembered Women’s Christmas as a different kind of celebration.

“It is a rural tradition and goes way, way back. I used to go with my mother and sister in the ‘40s and ‘50s. There were five or six women and they rotated to the different houses. Women did not go to pubs in those days, if a woman was seen in a pub in those days she would have been thought to be of questionable character, or looking for a man…not a good thing.”

Hogan said as soon as she and her sister were able to walk the two- or three-miles they went with their mother to whichever farm was hosting Women’s Christmas that year. Their six brothers and father stayed behind. “There was no car, and it was too dark to ride a bicycle, but the night sky was spectacular.” She remembers drinking minerals, meaning soft drinks, or coffee.

“Believe it or not, it was a treat to have coffee one time a year, especially since we drank it with cream taken from the top of the tank. Cream was a luxury because the price paid for the milk was based on the thickness of the butterfat on top.”

As Hogan recalls, her father went to the pub every day when he took the horses to deliver the milk to the creamery. Her mother stayed home. Little Christmas was “an opportunity to talk to each other, share the highlights of the year and typically look forward to a better year ahead.”

The owners at the time, the Hurleys, told me they had taken over the Seanachi a few years earlier. “We made a really big deal of Little Christmas that year, and it was really successful,” she said.” We were fully booked and had lots of groups of women, from four to 12 at a table. We put the idea out, had a special menu and provided entertainment.”

The Seanachi, which dates to the 1800s, was closed for several years prior to the Hurleys taking it over. “We rethatched the rood and filled the holes, painted it, but it still has the character that it did from Day 1. We did a lot of the work ourselves – it was exciting. She said they encouraged their kids to spend time there, working on Sundays and getting in the spirit of it, even cooking.”

Growing up in Galway, Hurley said her family celebrated Little Women’s Christmas at home. Her father and five brothers cooked for us women that day. “This past year I took the day off at the Seanachi we did the same. My husband and our one son cooked for my two daughters and me.”

In the years since, I have often kept my tree and lights up and had a Women’s Little Christmas Party on January 6. Not this year (thank you, omicron), but maybe a nice warm evening in May when the flowers return we can celebrate Faux Women’s Little Christmas. Even if it means wearing masks and keeping 6 feet apart. It is a tradition worth preserving.