Christmas Day is a date full of familiar traditions but Fionola Meredith finds some families celebrating it on their own terms
There's no other day in the year quite so indelibly marked with its own characteristic brand of carols and crackers, turkey and tinsel as December 25th. It's laden with evocative memories and family mythology. But the date on which we traditionally celebrate Christmas is a pretty arbitrary choice, since historians and theologians still debate the precise chronology of Christ's birth and death. Many fellow Europeans make more of a fuss of Christmas Eve than Christmas Day.
The early Christian church simply tacked Christmas on to the ancient pagan festivals of Yule and Saturnalia, realising that December was a great time of the year for a colourful knees-up, to cheer everyone out of their wintry gloom.
But the increasing complexity of our public and private lives means that, for some people, holding Christmas on December 25th can be a problem. So why not tuck into the turkey on a more convenient date? Simply pick a day, as close to Christmas as possible. Then flick on the fairy lights and shift into Christmas mode, while everyone else is still rushing around frantically buying last-minute presents.
"All it means is getting organised that little bit earlier," says Jackie McFadden. For the past two years, Jackie and her partner Tim have held their main Christmas celebration on December 24th, since Tim often has to work on Christmas Day. "And actually, you get to feel pretty smug, getting it all over and done with a day in advance." Three-year-old Megan, the couple's daughter, hasn't a clue that she isn't opening her presents on the day itself. Doesn't Jackie feel a little guilty about duping her? "Not a bit. On the 25th I take Megan to my mum's house and we do Christmas all over again with the whole family. I get to put my feet up and Megan is spoilt rotten. It's just the obvious way for us to handle Christmas, and this way no-one misses out. I'm surprised more people don't do it. The 25th isn't set in stone, you know." But not everyone is convinced that Christmas can be so easily shifted. Margot Boyle's daughter Anne travelled to France to spend Christmas with her fiance's family last year. Margot and her family held an early celebration in mid-December, but Margot believes that something vital was missing. "It felt artificial; there wasn't the same magic you get on the day itself. The whole day seemed ordinary, and a bit of an effort too, as though we were putting on a kind of performance." This year, tradition has been re-established: Anne and her new husband will be coming to Margot's for Christmas lunch on the 25th, and Margot already has preparations for a lavish - and authentic - feast well under way.
In most families, it's the mother who is at the heart of the Christmas celebrations, slaving away in the kitchen over hot mince pies, or leaping up at the crack of dawn on Christmas Day to get the turkey in the oven. But grown-up children can find that their mother is not too pleased when they start making their own Christmas plans. Claire, who is originally from Derry, had been dutifully travelling home to her mum's for Christmas for years, first with her husband, and then with her young daughters. But two years ago, she decided to try something different. "I just wanted a change, so we booked a holiday abroad over Christmas, arriving back in Ireland early on St Stephen's Day. I felt a bit guilty doing it, because I'm an only child.
"I told my mum we could do Christmas with all the trimmings on the 26th. She agreed, a bit reluctantly. But our day-late Christmas turned out really badly. My mum was more hurt than I'd thought that we'd gone away instead of coming to her, and although she tried to make an effort to be jolly, I could tell she was still upset."
Christmas can be a particularly trying time for separated parents and their children. Next to financial worries, arrangements over where and how the children spend the big day is often the top concern. Doreen Condon, of the Marriage and Relationship Counselling Service in Dublin, says that doing Christmas twice - for instance, once with mum on Christmas Day, then again with dad on St Stephen's Day, can be enjoyable for children. She believes the key is to create an alternative Christmas to previous years, with a real attempt to create new rituals and traditions.
"Shift everything - change the food, pretend you're all in Australia, or, if you have the money, go skiing. Just make it different. Yes, it does need imagination and creativity, and that can be hard when your life is collapsing around your ears. But whatever you do, you need to make it seem like a positive thing for your children. They need that security."
Ruth Coleman from One Family, the national organisation for one-parent families in Ireland, says that planning Christmas access arrangements as early as possible is vital, if last-minute confusion and arguments are to be avoided. Gillian, a single parent from Limerick, who tried shifting her main Christmas celebrations on to St Stephen's Day last year, agrees that children feel happier if the Christmas arrangements are in place well in advance.
"They need to know what's happening. Last year I had to work a night shift on the 24th, so my son and daughter went to their dad's on the 25th. Then I did a re-run of Christmas on the 26th.
"But this year the kids made it clear that they wanted to be in their own home for Christmas Day itself, so that's what we're doing."
Playing around with Christmas Day is sacrilege for traditionalists. But for some, casting off the weight of festive tradition, and treating it as a movable feast, can be a real relief.
