A Few Christmas Memories

Well, another Christmas comes at us at 100mph as usual. There are the people you must send cards to, gifts to buy and the parties to attend. With me, memories of past Christmas’s will crop up.


When I had a family so long ago, we’d used to go to our Uncle’s Christmas Eve party at his house on Sterry St. The Irish celebration does not include much food as the Irish could never cook to save their lives. There was however, much alcohol. I can remember the adults first acting normal then getting progressively louder (read as: drunker) till one of them fell on the card table knocking it over. We kids took advantage of the situation by doing what we wanted as the adults were too silly to manage us. Overall, it was a fun night.

A strange occurrence would happen later in the night at each of those parties for years for which I was never given a proper explanation. A man would show up, an Irish national, and would back slap and shake everyone’s hand. He would work the crowd and collect money and checks from them. The adults would be talking about people I never knew, one being Bernadette Devlin. The name stuck with me because of the odd last name sounding like the DEVIL. He would stay about 30 minutes and claim he had many other parties to attend that night. When I asked why he was collecting so much money my uncle would say, (in an Oi-rish accent) “Oh Ronnie, he’s collecting for the poor in Ireland, it’s a Christmas gift from us to them. They can buy shoes, clothing and food with it.”

Being seven years old you believe what grown ups tell you.

A few years later I finally figured it out when I learned that this man was a “Southie” from Boston, an illegal Irish immigrant and was armed. One night he was showing an automatic pistol to someone in my uncle’s driveway. I happened to be looking in the right direction when he pulled it out halfway from his winter coat.

The brain clicks…one plus one equals…the Irish Republican Army. I later learned that this “Bernadette Devlin” was radical agitator during the Troubles in Ireland.

“Collecting for the poor in Ireland…huh?” I sarcastically thought to myself.




*****

As I became much older and as our family was being whittled down one by one, my brother and I would find our other friends who were in a similar situation and create our own “family” for that night. On Christmas Eve’s, we would ape an East Side of Providence Jewish tradition and go to Chinese restaurants. Since Christmas Eve and Christmas itself pretty much shuts down the state, your Jewish will find the only other race that kept their businesses open that night, the Chinese.

Our group was pretty varied. We had a RISD art teacher, a cab driver/writer, a few lawyers and a couple of actors from Trinity Rep where my brother had been working. We’d eat, drink and recall past Xmas’s or just yap in general. My brother never drank much and whined to go home early. Sure, fine. I’d then go over to the Polish family I knew to finish out the evening. I’d be offered a few shots of some Polish rubbing alcohol called “Spiritus.” Augh, that stuff was awful! Christmas mornings brought a nice breakfast of fried rice and crab Rangoon!