Displaced in Mullingar:Nostalgic memories of rural Christmas offer no protection from the swell of manic shoppers , writes Michael Harding

I'm surprised at the number of people who tell me I should go back to Co Leitrim. I don't think they mean it offensively. They just believe, naively, that happiness is still to be found in a rustic world, with a dainty chimney of curling smoke in the wild mountains, the glow of lights in the window at night, and the silence of calm

abiding, unbroken but for the wild call of the hen harrier or the screech of the wind in bare winter trees.

And I suppose Christmas makes some people think of donkeys, and stables, and robins and holly bushes and fields of white snow, and angels somewhere up above it all.

I was in Canton Casey's in the late afternoon, an old-world bar beside the Market House. It has ancient furnishings and an open fire, and I began to recall all those rustic Christmases around the tinsel tree, with a candle in the window, and a little crib on the mantelpiece, and a mechanical bird that gave a mechanical rendition of Ding Dong Merrily on High, until the cat bit its head off. Pubescent sopranos on the radio, squawking about "logs on the fire", and me, glued to the window and wishing for snow.

Nostalgia, someone said, is the revenge we take on the past.

I remember the unbearable itch for a climax. Holding my breath until the presents were opened. Until the inane, Christmas morning phone calls were made.

How are you? And what are you doing today? And that last ditch attempt at achieving climax, by carrying the roasted bird ceremoniously to the table and force-feeding it to the extended family.

But I could never admit to anyone that there was always a moment of anxiety in my little wonderland. A moment of bitterness in the sleepy hours of Christmas afternoon, when things never quite hit the bullseye of angelic bliss.

A secret unease with that sentimental world of rustic charm, snow and berried holly. That warm and safe world which God apparently loved so much, that he allowed his Son hang out in a crib, in order to assure us that we were the centre of the universe, while we gorged ourselves on jellies.

After a second pint of Guinness in Canton Casey's, I headed for Xtra-vision, passing the Greville Arms with its dainty neon signs glowing in the afternoon urban dark.

This could be Tokyo, I thought.

People on the sidewalk gazing into screens. Talking into mobile phones. Waiting for money that comes out of walls. Everyone stressed in the fairy light. The relentless cry of the Pogues from every shop doorway - "Happy Christmas Your Arse".

A very famous actor told me once that he was born in Mullingar.

"I never knew that," I said.

"Not many do," he admitted. "I ran away with the theatre when I was 12."

He described the night when Anew McMaster came to town with his fit-up company. How he was enthralled. And how he slipped away from home and joined up with the company as a general hand.

"The following night we played in Edenderry," he said. "It was as if I had gone to the other end of Europe."

But Europe, with all its modernist isolation and intellectual uncertainty, is a civilisation that was first imagined by poor immigrants in small cafes, with only their stories, memories, and small change for coffee. And now Europe has come to the other end of Mullingar.

Clutching The Wind that Shakes the Barley, I headed back to my apartment, though it was difficult to negotiate a way through the swell of manic shoppers. My memories of Christmases long ago felt as useless as a jam jar of buttons.

Yet, like a wise man I am determined to find home in this strange place called Mullingar. Amid the amber lights twinkling in the haunting din of the bars, and the glow of the jeweller's shop, and the unbearable beauty of a young girl on a mobile phone outside Abrakebabra, breaking up with her boyfriend.

And I can hear something beyond the traffic or the sound of rain sweeping the streets. I can almost hear something like angels over Mullingar, singing hosanna for a new Ireland that might be found in these streets and laneways, and doorways and alleyways, where strangers stand in out of the rain, to shelter from the storm, and give birth to new gods.