I ALWAYS associate Christmas time with the beginning of my acting career - well, maybe using the word ‘career’ might sound a little bit presumptuous.
In truth, I think I’ve taken part in about six or eight plays - not sketches or stand up now, mind, but full length productions with a proper script, over period of 50 years.
The script in actual fact has always been my downfall - well, learning it and, most importantly, sticking to it!
I could talk for Ireland and tell stories ’til the cows come home from foreign holidays, but ‘learning off lines’ and speaking them correctly at the right time was never my forte. Leave me ad lib with another one or two where we’d maybe have a kinda general idea of what we wanted to say and do - that suits me just grand altogether.
I recall one time back in the 1970s the local Macra branch here had a one-act play going. Rehearsals went well for nearly a month - I was given the role of ‘prompter’, sure, with the script in my hand I’d have no problem helping out anyone ‘from the wings’ if they got stuck.
Well, didn’t the grandmother of one of the cast die a day or two before the play was to go on in competition. Panic stations, and wasn’t yours truly persuaded (coerced) to fall in for the bereaved actor?
I can’t even recall the name of the play now but I know all I had to say was maybe ten lines - divided between about four different situations in the play. I was woeful, saying the wrong thing at the right time and the right thing at the wrong time!
I think the Adjudicator was merciful to me on my major stage debut. He said something like ‘You can’t beat experience’, and that if I ‘kept at it there was a bright future in front of me’!
Well, it’s still in front of me!
Decades later, I played the part of Daheen Timinieen Din in John B. Keane’s Many Young Men Of Twenty and every single night my ‘wife’ Maynan never knew if I was coming or going!
In Ireland, traditionally Lent was the big season for plays and drama groups all over the country, when no dancing was allowed by decree of the Church.
On the other hand, Christmas and the New Year was really the pantomime season. In the 1960s, a pantomime was staged here in the Local Hall for several years with the cast members comprising the older classes from the local National School. My late mother took on the role of Producer for a good few ‘seasons ‘and we were usually on stage in early to mid December.
I can never remember playing a king or a prince or brave warrior, but my first role suited my limited acting ability very well. I was suited and booted and had very few, if any, lines.
Yes, I was the Big Bad Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. My costume was mainly fashioned from a very old fur coat which had possibly originated in London.
Molly O Neill was from Knockanore in the Co. Waterford. I think she spent years in London, then returned, possibly to Dublin. In her old age she came to live with cousins in Bartlemy - the O Keefes.
Mam and Bessy O Keeffe were very friendly and I suppose one word borrowed another. Anyhow, I was given a present of Molly O Neill’s very old fur coat. This became my wolf ‘outfit’ and was also used by the next generation from this household in the 1990s in other stage shows.
Snarling, growling, snapping and salivating were the main functions which I had to perform in that pantomime almost 60 years ago. It was an inauspicious start to a budding acting career which is still budding.
The one thing I felt about our school show back then at the start of Advent was that it truly heralded the arrival of the Christmas season, always in or around December 8. Nowadays, Halloween is scarcely gone when the Christmas stuff appears.
I often give out about the fact the Christmas is over-commercialised. Lately, however, as I get older, I am more accepting of the changes the decades have brought and often think to myself, ‘wouldn’t it be worse if Christmas was forgotten and not celebrated at all’?
It’s with thoughts such as these that I welcome this lovely time each year.
Our own children have long gone through their school shows and pantomimes and I marvel these weeks on seeing grandchildren treading the boards in their plays, dances, mimes and songs. It makes me feel older, but then I am older!
Still, the joy and excitement that light up little faces is something to behold - in fairness, the children growing up today are miles ahead of us half a century ago in terms of confidence and ability to speak out - God Bless ’em all.
I suppose I was about six when given that wolf role, so that might be this time of the year in 1963 - the year President Kennedy was killed. What do I remember of Christmas back then? Well, it was always colder -from early November right over Christmas and into the early spring we used to have frost nearly every day.
Back then, we used grow a few acres of potatoes, and coming up to Christmas Mam would be ‘choosing’ the good ones from the bad and preparing to sell them in Fermoy and Cork. A lot of the little extras and treats that us five children got at Christmas were ‘funded’ from potato sales.
We had maybe 12 or 14 cows back then. They were all ‘stalled’ indoors for the winter and fed with hay, turnips and mangolds. Christ was born in a stable in a rural area. Growing up in the countryside, we could readily understand all about stables, mangers, straw, donkeys and shepherds.
I’m not sure if we had a television then, probably not, but it didn’t matter really ’cause Christmas was always about people coming and going - right up ’til Twelfth night on January 6.
Cousins we mightn’t have seen for months would be calling just for a chat and catch-up on family news.
On a farm, Christmas was still a busy time with cattle, sheep and pigs to be fed - the same as ourselves! I still recall on Christmas mornings of Paddy, who worked for us, giving an extra pike of hay to each and every cow in the stall - it was Christmas for them also!
The church would be packed for Christmas morning Mass and two more Masses might be said ‘back to back’ so everyone had a chance to go.
Visiting the crib was so important. It might have been up for ten days but ’twas only on that special morning that the Infant nestled in his bed of straw. Mam would always bring away a single sop of that straw - it brought luck to the house for the year.
At home, the fire would be lit ‘below in the room’ as well as in the dining room where we ate the Christmas dinner. For the next 12 days only ‘necessary servile work’ was done in the farmyard.
We didn’t feast every day but ‘keeping’ the 12 days of Christmas was important to us as a family.
I suppose many things, indeed most things, have changed, changed utterly in the last 50 years, but truly Christmas will never change.
At the heart of it all is the celebration of a birthday. The experts tell us nowadays that no proof exists exactly as to when the child Jesus was born, but still the world will celebrate next Monday.
God knows, in these troubled times in a troubled and battered world, we do need special occasions.
May I wish each and every reader a Happy, Holy and Peaceful Christmas Season. Thanks for your support during 2023 and may the New Year bring joy and happiness to all.
‘As I walk across the Glen on a Winter’s day with Christmas on our heels
All the hills are looking sleepy with peace and silence in the air
The holly trees with their rosary beads with crimson red on a branch green
They tell their tale of love on Christmas Day with divine display
They dazzle the eye with an inner peace in our hearts a joy to behold
All the little children waiting for the day when Santa brings his gift of love around the Christmas tree
Walk on walk slow, to the land of dreams’.
(Thoughts Of Christmas, by Maurice Canning from his latest collection, The New Line)
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