IT was never a word I liked ... obligation.
There were much better words really, even duty never seemed as bad. It's a word that I associate with this time of year. There were these people we didn't very much like but there was an obligation to go and see them. The date would be arranged and we would go to the house - freezing cold it always was - for the Christmastime visit.
There were hard, uncomfortable chairs with cushions like cannon balls which would break your foot when they fell off the hard shiny fabric. The conversation was stilted, their knowledge of us and interest in us limited, questions about what we hoped to get for Christmas perfunctory and irrelevant since they gave us a small box of aniseed balls which we all hated.
To this day I don't know what the obligation was. It was unlikely that they had lent us money - my father wouldn't borrow sixpence. They had not introduced us to polite society (which was why people in Jane Austen had obligations to other people). They didn't look wretched and lonely, nor were they noticeably cheered by our visit, so that couldn't have been it.
It remains a mystery but it coloured the word.
And then if people said they would be obliged if you did something that was bad too, there was more than a hint of criticism in it.
"We'd be obliged if you would finish up your drinks and vacate the premises."
"I'd be obliged if you could pay back that tenner you owe me.
Even if it is used as a compliment, it's a bit halfhearted. When people say that someone is obliging they usually mean that the someone is a near simpleton.
It's odd that such an ordinary word should have such overtones - even in the church. It seems such a stern, unloving word for a feast day, to call it a holy day of obligation.
What it meant and still means is that there is an obligation to attend Mass that day, a church instruction to make the feast day even more important than it already was.
Which is fine. Any organisation, society or community has its rules. It's just the word that seems to be the wrong one. It sort of takes the celebration out of it - it's as if people had birthdays of obligation, where you were obliged to give a present or there'd be trouble.
Last week when people were talking about December 8th, and people came to Dublin to do the shopping, and the shops teemed with school kids, there was a sustained and animated argument about the status of these holidays. There was a school of thought that if they fell on a Sunday, the obligation was transferred to the following Monday. In other words, you couldn't get away with one Mass, you had to go to two.
Others said this was ridiculous, they were confusing it with bank holidays. If St Patrick's Day fell on a Sunday then we all got the Monday off in lieu. That's what they were thinking of.
Eejits.
But the first lot didn't let go. No, they definitely remembered that if a feast was on a Sunday, then it was celebrated the next day.
It was an impasse until someone remembered the Catholic Press Office, which was agreed to be an arbiter. A courteous telephone call got an equally courteous reply. It was true that if a major feast did turn out to be on a Sunday then the liturgical celebration of that feast was postponed to the following day, but no obligation to attend Mass went with it.
So everyone's honour was more or less satisfied, and the conversation returned to December 8th and how people went out to get their Christmas trees, and how if you had given up drink or sweets in Advent then December 8th was a day off, and you could go back on either.
People talked about what it used to be like in, days gone past. Taking their children by the hand and getting weak in the stomach when they realised the Christmas expectations. And there would have been race meetings (weren't there?) on December 8th - it was the kind of a time you could have a great day out, getting away from all the rush and fuss, until you got back home and your wife would say... thank you very much for all the help you were with the children today.
Or there was a time when a crowd of them would meet for hot whiskeys in some pub, a sort of tradition.
And a woman remembered way back when her mother had a cake icing party - all her friends brought their cakes around to this kitchen and they all iced them together, companionably if erratically, as they drank a couple of bottles of sherry throughout the day.
And because people get older, and we don't live for ever, a lot of the recollections were of those who had died. The people who had gone to the races . . . there are very few of them left, and many of those who drank the hot whiskeys as a tradition will not be there now to drink them, some who had held the children's hands going shopping were gone and almost everyone who had iced the cakes in the hot, happy kitchen.
AND it was then they spoke of the big Christmas tree that will light up tomorrow, December 8th, to music and song in the grounds of the Hospice in Harold's Cross, Dublin.
They are having it at an earlier hour this year, so that more families with children can attend. There will be music from 4 p.m. and then the ceremony is between 5 and 5.30 p.m. Every light on the tree will stand for the memory of someone, and the crowds will be the choir and singers will ring out through the dark Dublin evening.
Luka Bloom will sing Sanctuary, Geraldine O'Grady will play An Cuilin, Niamh Murray will sing You Light Up My Life. Everyone who was there last year will want to go again, and many more. And they all say the same thing: that it is easier to acknowledge life and regret the death of someone you love and miss in the company of hundreds and hundreds of people all doing the same thing. Nobody takes any notice of tears on faces. The huge number of lights on the tree is deeply comforting.
They give tea and mince pies to everyone. Some people may want to talk to those beside them, others to stay alone with their thoughts. The knowledge that the hospice does such great work to ease the journey between life and death for those who go and those who stay is inspiring.
People pay £5 to have a name included in the Book of Lights on the Tree but they stress that this isn't essential. The name can go into their list, money or no money, and names can be added right up to Christmas. You can talk to the hospice about it and arrange that your light shines out as a memory tomorrow afternoon and all through Christmas by phoning freephone 1800 342 342.