I remember the Christmas Eve smells. No, not the smell of brandy in the Christmas pud, not the waft of mince pies. I remember the smell of the turkey. Before it was cooked.
Nowadays turkeys come, ready to be popped in the oven. Back in my childhood, we watched and smelt the reality.
First my mother would cover the kitchen table with old newspapers. Then she’d lay the plucked turkey on the table and go at it with our sharpest knife. First the head, then the feet, until you had a limbless bird. Then – and I can smell it still – she’d shove her hand in and pull out the turkey’s insides.
When a turkey is cooked, it’s got a delicious nostril-filling sweetness. As a turkey’s innards are removed, it produces a stink that would bring a horse to its knees. I mean revolting. My mother, having produced eight children, was contemptuous of any in the family who held their nose or rushed from the room. A turkey was a turkey, of course it had guts and heart and liver and poo, and of course you had to pull all that out and toss it in a bucket beside the kitchen table. That done, the inside was searched for any more offensive bits, until we had a totally hollow and ready-to-be-basted turkey. The blood-soaked newspapers were removed, the table scrubbed down, the bucket emptied in the midden beside the byre.
Then we laid our shoes in a row along the kitchen floor, so Santy could put our presents on them. Stockings were for wearing, not hanging.
On Christmas morning, we all piled into the Morris 8 and drove the mile to Omagh chapel, where, because it was Christmas, the priest was able to say not one but three Masses. All joined seamlessly: the De Profundis was barely finished before he was into the Introibo ad altare Dei and we were off again. My father always was a man with an eye for a bargain – if there were three Masses for the price of one, so to speak, he took the three. And so did we.
Then it was home and opening our presents. You could have shoved as many letters to Santy up the chimney as you liked, but what you got was usually a bit less marvelous than what you’d hoped. You mightn’t have got a tricycle but a toy tricycle wasn’t bad.
Then you read the Film Fun Annual and lazed about until the call went up that the dinner finally, at last, for God’s sake it’s after three o’clock, was ready. With any luck, no Pope’s nose but a bit of the turkey wing, lashings of gravy and spuds and brussel sprouts and orange juice, plum pud with brandy butter sauce slathered over the top of it. Then trifle with a distinct alcohol taste, and tea and cheese and biscuits – and sweets- to make sure you were really filled.
Even as you lay like a beached whale, half-asleep in an armchair, wondering why you had eaten so much, you felt mildly relieved that it was all over for another year. Three Masses in a row and being lodged for a full day in the bosom of your family, was too like a bullet lodged in your chest: it was hard to breathe but still, give us that Quality Street box of sweets, I’ve just about room for one more. I think.
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