THERE ARE few agreed facts and many versions of what supposedly happened in the past. Reared in a deeply political house, I was aware from an early age that my family's perspective on Irish history was at odds with the official version, writes SARAH CAREY
Over a lifetime of dinner table debates, I thought we’d deconstructed Ireland’s 20th century mythology in its entirety, until I casually mentioned Arnotts’ special Charity Day next Tuesday, December 8th.
Arnotts is giving a free €20 voucher to customers with every purchase over €100 on the 8th. This voucher can be donated to any charity of the customer’s choice, and there’ll be six charities hosting stands in the shop to help spread the word. It’s a lovely idea, because I know when I’m spending too much, I get an urge to balance the indulgence with a donation. The trick is to make that call or click that link before the moment passes. A stand in-store is the perfect mechanism to exploit consumer guilt and give the giving a push-start with the free €20.
So how did this perfectly good idea result in a heated dispute at home on Sunday? Arnotts say they picked December 8th for this venture because it’s the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the most Blessed Virgin Mary, who, by singular grace and privilege granted by almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin.
Or, as we know it in Ireland – Culchie Shopping Day.
Everyone knows December 8th was the traditional day when rural folk came up to Dublin to do their Christmas shopping. Except in our house, where the entire premise of this myth was hotly contested.
First, when did this tradition supposedly start? It certainly couldn’t have been any time before the 1950s when there were no cars, no fuel and no one went anywhere except on a bicycle.
Secondly, since the Feast of the Immaculate Conception was a Holy Day of Obligation, it was observed as one would a Sunday when, according to the widely observed Catechism of the Most Rev James Butler, all unnecessary servile work and profanation of the Lord was strictly forbidden. Since shopping came under both categories, surely no country soul would risk a trip to Dublin?
This instinct to observe the sabbath is undisputed among my parents’ agricultural class and generation. I recall one holiday weekend just a few years ago, returning triumphantly from Power City with my sisters and proudly displaying our purchases. Hair dryers, radios, toasted sandwich makers and the never-to-be-used juicer were all unpacked, to my father’s horror. “Of an Easter Sunday,” he observed grimly, before returning to his own peculiar penance – reading the “trash” in the Sunday papers.
Keeping holy the sabbath was not confined to a shopping prohibition. My mother recalled her mother declaring that the devastation wreaked by the storms on December 8th, 1954, described in detail in Monday’s “Irishman’s Diary” by Brendan Landers, was surely divine retribution against those women who had used the day to make Christmas puddings.
My mother also insists that with the exception of the puddings, sending letters to America and turkey killing, Christmas did not start until Christmas Day, when the subsequent 12 days to the Feast of the Epiphany were devoted to visiting. I remember the turkey killing well alright, in particular the technique employed. The trick was to pull and twist the neck rather than bend and snap as one might imagine. But we’ll leave that childhood mental injury for another day.
Her point is that in rural Ireland, where life was more often than not a matter of subsistence, there was no such thing as shopping because there was no such thing as disposable income. Therefore, “culchie shopping day on the 8th” was simply an invention of consumerism, itself a relatively recent development in Irish society. The claim by Arnotts to restore a tradition which never existed in the first place is therefore simply an exercise in capitalist propaganda. And you thought we sat around and talked about the weather.
I submitted gingerly to this torrent of revisionism that I had clear memories of being brought to Dublin to see the lights. There was the walk up Grafton Street to see Switzer’s windows, the long queues for Santy, followed by the excitement of eating at McDonalds.
My mother conceded these visits did occur, prompted by our annual piano exams in the Academy of Music on Westland Row. But we tried to work out when the notion of a pre-Christmas shopping trip to Dublin entered popular culture. The closest we could get was the opening of McDonald’s in 1977. Economists have long recognised the introduction of McDonald’s as a benchmark in a country’s development towards democracy and consumerism. By 1995 Switzers was gone, and regular Sunday trading meant the rare opportunity presented by a day off school on the 8th was not so rare anymore.
Our conclusion then was that this tradition may have arisen, possibly, over a 15-year period, between the end of the oil shocks and the beginning of the Tiger. These may not be the total facts of the case, but it’s our version anyway. As for the Arnotts one-stop splurge and purge, it’s a novel idea that hopefully will become a tradition.