Even the dogs of war get sentimental at Christmas. On the radio yesterday, Munster enforcer Paul O'Connell sounded rather like the boy whom Santa forgot when he lamented that modern rugby did not give players a chance to observe the festive season in the traditional Irish manner.

Big Paul painted a vision of Christmas that would have done justice to Norman Rockwell and you could all but see the chestnuts roasting on the open fire, catch the aroma of fresh brandy butter and hear the tinkling of glasses as old friends celebrated their annual Christmas reunions.

While all that goes on around the country, Big Paul will spend the festive season in the mud and grind of the Munster training camp, grunting and struggling somewhere between the massive torso of Denis Leamy and the formidable backside of John Hayes. Now, that may well be a task which would constitute the dream Christmas gift of many a Munster fan.

But Paul was hinting that for one day only, he wished he could become a regular slacker like the rest of us, wolfing down that third helping of pudding, blearily watching Citizen Kane while gorging on the box of Roses and, at about two in the morning, wandering into the kitchen like Tony Soprano and casting a lascivious eye on the turkey. Pigging out, in other words.

After all, the season of unabashed indulgence in rich foods and drink cannot be much fun for the sporting folks. When Sonia O'Sullivan was lording it on the running tracks of the world, she once casually remarked that on the rare occasions she took a biscuit with her coffee, she felt compelled to sit down and blitz through 200 sit-ups immediately afterwards.

When Andre Agassi was preparing for his second coming in tennis, he spent one broiling Christmas day sprinting up and down a hillside near his home until he collapsed.

As Tony McCoy prepares for the Leopardstown meeting in a few days' time, he may get to sit down for dinner with his family but it is pitiful to think of the others horsing through the roast potatoes and stuffing while the jockey nibbles on a slice of dry toast, maybe garnished with the faintest trace of marmalade for a festive treat. And while the gang break open the Milk Tray, McCoy will head off to the sauna just to make sure he hasn't put on a few pounds just by looking at all that food.

The rest of us fool ourselves that it is fine to dive hell-for-leather into the Christmas culinary delights because in January, damn it, life is going to change. Come the first of 2007, every day will begin with a 6am date on the Stairmaster or a bracing five-mile walk to work. So we assure ourselves that it doesn't matter that we will consume more calories in one meal than Haile Gebrselassie does over an entire year. Cometh January, Cometh the Body Beautiful.

Sporting heroes know different, though. For the elite people, there is no off-season, not even for a day. The Gaelic football boys from Armagh may look at a plate of mouthwatering mince pies as hungrily as the rest of us but they simply tap into their pain, and instead of a pastry holly garnish, they see a mince-pie-shaped Gooch or Paul Galvin grinning back and winking at them. They hear Pat Spillane whispering in their ears, egging them on to enjoy their delicious festive treat, promising them that nobody will ever find out. And then they will grimace and reach for a banana and head off for a cross-country run.

Because mince pies are for losers. You often hear of athletes, particularly in Gaelic games, who use Christmas Day to purge themselves. A friend out for a drive once spotted a well-known footballer jogging through a snow blizzard while the rest of the country was falling asleep in front of Star Wars or becoming involved in bitter disputes over Trivial Pursuit.

It is all about getting the head-start. One of the most beautiful things about Christmas Day in this country is the absolute silence which falls across our cities and countryside. At the right time of day, you feel as though you have the place all to yourself.

And so for the intercounty man embarking on a solitary, long-distance run at dusk, there is a certain comfort to be derived from the knowledge that Henry Shefflin is engaged in nothing more strenuous than constructing a Thomas the Tank Engine railway set for his nephew.

There was a picture in the New York Times this week of basketball stars from the LA Lakers and the Knicks dispensing food and gifts to residents in the impoverished quarters of Harlem. Although the sanctioning body of the NBA requests that all teams get involved in these goodwill acts during the Christmas period, many of the players pitched in with $10,000 contributions to the local charities.

But their physical presence was the most valuable gift: the hand-outs are now one of the very rare occasions when the untouchable stars of America's professional ball sports actually engage with normal people in any meaningful way. Sport continues full steam through the American Christmas period, with December 25th football games as much a part of tradition as the decorated tree.

And in England, the "Boxing Day" football fixture-list is usually one of the most high-profile on the calendar.

At least in this country, Christmas Day is something of a sporting armistice. We like to grumble that it just doesn't "feel" like Christmas anymore. We moan that the "buzz" that reliably and thrillingly swept through our towns in the Yuletide seasons of yesteryear has sadly disappeared, and casting a damning eye around the blinking festive lights, the bright, seductive shop fronts, we piously note that the whole shebang has gone far too commercial anyway.

But for all that, we go the whole hog in observing it. And for all the complaints about Christmas, where would we be without it? It is the one day when the big engine, the remorseless march of time, seems to shut down in this country. You get a chance to catch your breath.

Christmas is really about that single day, that old-fashioned, childlike day Paul O'Connell was talking about with a touch of lost wonder in his voice. It is an important day even in a minor matter like sport, long and significant enough to place a dividing line between the thunderous, breathtaking occasions that went rushing past over the last 12 months and those that are to come.

Christmas Day is the one day when the playing fields are silent and the sporting heroes of this country have nowhere to be beyond the place at the table where they sat when they were five years old.

Pile his plate high, Mrs O'Connell.

Happy Christmas to you and yours.