Christmas for the ladies

At this time of year you’ve probably had it with festive planners, Christmas countdowns and those magazine features about what presents to buy — as if picking presents, rather than paying for them, were the problem. So when I say that the Christmas season is actually too short, and that we should round it off with a second, mini-Christmas, you may get a bit restive. But bear with me.

Let’s get onto the second idea first, viz, the mini Christmas. In Ireland, that’s actually what it’s called, the Nollaig Beag or Nollaig na mBan — the Little Christmas, or the woman’s Christmas. That’s the name for the Epiphany in the west of Ireland and the gist of it, as you’ll have gathered, is that it was a day for the women. They would go round to each other’s houses and take tea and cake, and talk. ‘It was their day, the women’s day,’ one old woman in Limerick told me.