“THE past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” True when first written 70 years ago, by novelist L.P Hartley - and it remains true today.
It suggests that only those who have lived through a certain time in a certain place can truly know what it was like. The rest is guesswork, for historians to untangle.
One of the more unfortunate phenomena in recent years - greatly fuelled by social media - has been the denigration of Ireland’s recent past and, by definition, the people who lived, loved and died in those times.
Decades like the 1970s, for instance, are often cast as some kind of dark age, by people who view the world, then and now, via a certain lens through which social justice is all that matters.
Sure, life was tough then, poverty, unemployment and emigration were rife. Ireland was in many ways a sexist society, and religion was front and centre of life, which undoubtedly had a restrictive effect on the nation.
But the 1970s was not a bad or unhappy age. I should know, I lived through it as a child. My memory is of a safe and happy time, when children were allowed to roam wild and free, with not a phone in sight. How bad?
Yes, our childhoods played out against a backdrop of dreary news headlines (some things never change!). But we left all the worrying to the adults. Again, how bad?
Being a child of the 1970s was no bad thing - far from it - and I have been delighted in recent weeks to see other children of that era backing my corner; wrestling back the narrative from those who never even lived in that decade, but strive to paint it as a dark age.
One of them is Shane Lehane, a folklorist at UCC, who penned a brilliantly evocative article for the Holly Bough on his memories of a ’70s Christmas dinner growing up.
Superbly researched, every detail sends a fresh wave of nostalgia washing over you.
Shane recalls the prawn cocktail starter - “the shrimps came directly out of a tin, strained and mixed with salad cream which had already been mixed with tomato sauce, and perched on a few lettuce leaves.”
The turkey and ham would be cut up using a new invention: an electric carving knife. “Perhaps the most inefficient contraption ever invented, many a wonderful ham was reduced to a mangled sawdust of meat by the oscillating blades,” recalled Shane.
His memories of the Christmas Day veg of that era are priceless.
“On Christmas Eve, before going to bed the kettle would be boiled, the big white tablet placed in the bowl and the small green box of Batchelor’s marrowfats would steep in the hot water overnight.
“The meal was accompanied by Lea & Perrin’s Worcestershire Sauce, necessary for the over-boiled, watery brussels sprouts - never a universal favourite”.
And onto puddings, desserts, chocolates, and more treats!
“There is something quintessentially Irish about what happened next,” recalled Shane. “Someone asked, ‘Would anyone fancy a turkey sandwich?’ And for some inexplicable reason, there was room for more food, and nothing tasted better!”
Much of this will be familiar to all ages, but Shane evocatively captures the essence of the 1970s.
In a Holly Bough podcast I recorded with him, he expanded on his memory of the ’70s Christmas to include his father, Tadg, passing out cigarettes around the Christmas dinner table to his children as an extra treat!
If you have a spare 20 minutes or so in the days ahead, listen in - it will send you careering down memory lane.
Shane says he has had a great reaction to his article. “Some have been quite vociferous in their defence of the maligned brussels sprout,” he said. “There have been conversations about them being acrobatically tossed from fork to mouth, and no need for the Lea and Perrins and its close cousin Yorkshire Relish. Others spoke with passion about Branston Pickle as an indispensable condiment with ham and spiced beef.”
As regards drinks, the ‘Little Norah’ lemonades and cordials were also mentoned, bottled in Bandon by Beamish and Crawford and coming in a variety of exotic fruit flavours including pineapple and ginger ale. Another reader pitched in with memories of Babycham and little bottles of Bols Advocaat.
Adding weight to my love-in for the 1970s, I received a book written by Cathal McCarthy, a former columnist with The Echo, called The Devil Wears Farah, which is effectively a love letter to that decade.
He explained his mission thus: “I wanted to nail the modern view that the ’70s were all bad. It was actually a time of love and laughter for me growing up.”
Cathal deconstructs this myth, with aplomb. Take his view of boredom for the kids of the 1970s.
“It was not just accepted on some primal level, it was recognised as necessary. We had that ability to ‘go within’ without necessarily doing anything in there. It’s called ‘Mindfulness’ now, we’d have called it ‘Why don’t you read your book?’” He says of adults of the era: “They were doing their best and weren’t any more mean-spirited or spiteful than we are. And if judging people or situations or decisions is the new mortal sin - and it certainly seems to be - then why are we so quick to judge ‘that’ Ireland and ‘those’ people, our parents and grandparents?
“How do we get to ceaselessly judge our parents’ society for being so judgemental?
“I’m not sure that they were that bad, and I’m absolutely sure that we’re not that good.”
Cathal, whose parents were from Cork, says here exactly what I have been trying to say since the start of this article - and does it so much better.
He fears that the modern view of the 1970s is full of “caricature and wilful self-serving misunderstanding”, concluding: “Can we try and remember the love and laughter and just park the time-travel indignation and judgement, for once?”
Hear, hear.
But, as Shane Lehane points out, let’s not start handing our kids cigarettes at the festive table.
Merry Christmas to you all!
Read More
Poetry helped Cork teenager cope with tragic death of her beloved brother More in this section
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