HERE are some extracts from my Christmas mailbag.
Number 1: "Why don't you go home, you dried up English c'. . t? Generations of Irish men and women have fought so we would not have to listen to the likes of you. It's typical of the sleveen mentality of The Irish Times that it gives you space to spew out Brit propaganda week after week - and probably pays you too. The sooner you f. . k off back to England, and take your chums Trimble and Paisley with you, the better."
Number 2: "Is there no end to your gullibility, wishful thinking and sheer silliness. Pardon my bluntness but I am sick and tired of reading your outrageous thoughts on Northern Ireland in The Irish Times. Let me spell out a few home truths: it doesn't seem to occur to you that Sinn Fein/IRA, the people who have to be treated `sensitively' - in whose mouths, according to you, butter" wouldn't melt - are murderers and bombers whose `sensitivity' to anyone who crosses them expresses itself in the use of the baseball bat (and that's the lightest punishment they dish out). It's not the Americans, the EU or Uncle Tom Cobley who is keeping the peace in Northern Ireland but the British whom you despise so much.
What? No invitations to share a heart-warming cup of festive cheer? Alas, no. The subject of Northern Ireland does not evoke the generous and sympathetic response which letter writers to this newspaper express so eloquently on other issues.
Some consolation came in a letter from a small country town in East Anglia. "My class are doing a project on issues that affect us today. I have chosen to study the Troubles in Northern Ireland. I am interested in the subject and think it is too easy to blame the IRA for everything." The writer is a 12-year-old. Truly, out of the mouths of babes come words that offer hope and goodwill.
I am exaggerating, perhaps disgracefully. Many of the letters I receive from all parts of this State express a deep sense of anguish about the tragedy in the North and repeatedly ask: "What can we do to help?"
Often those who write are already involved in setting up links that will improve understanding and mutual trust with similar groups in the North. I think humbly of notes received from businessmen in the Border counties, of the work done by the Meath Peace Group, of conferences organised in west Cork and many other places geographically remote from violence.
But there are also the other letters, so hostile and abusive that they must give pause for thought. Because I do believe that at least some of this anger and the intemperance with which it is expressed must be directed, not at me personally, but at the whole appalling, intractable mess of the situation in Northern Ireland and our failure to solve it.
Perhaps I have to believe this as a convenient excuse for not facing up to my own shortcomings as a commentator. It will almost certainly infuriate those who write and telephone this newspaper's endlessly patient and tactful Reader's Representative to demand that I be dismissed.
IN FACT, it was not my intention to write about the North in this last column before Christmas. I'd already drafted an article asking some questions provoked by a story in this week's issue of Newsweek, entitled "Ireland - the Emerald Tiger". Specifically, I wanted to try and tease out why, if the economy is booming, there are more homeless people on the streets of Dublin this Christmas than ever before, many of them children involved in prostitution.
There are real risks in the endless stream of self-congratulation that we get from politicians that the Irish economy is set to outstrip just about every other state in Europe - the reports of boom times in the building industry and of record spending on everything from toys to cars at Christmas.
Consciously or not, the effect is to raise ever higher the walls of exclusion that trap those less fortunate than ourselves in the ghetto of poverty. There's already evidence of a hardening in attitudes, for example to the unemployed or to those who find it difficult to make a living on low wages. We saw it in the hysterical reaction to reports of welfare fraud earlier this year, the suggestion by one TD that this constituted a scandal of greater proportions than the beef tribunal.
It's a timely subject for this period leading up to Christmas. But, not for the first time, the North seemed to exercise an even more serious claim on this space, precisely because it does provoke such extreme reactions of hostility. Like a difficult relative who turns up at Christmas, the heart may sink at the prospect of this truculent presence at the feast but we are honour-bound to try and work out a strategy for dealing with it ...
Even at the level of crude self-interest, we can't afford to ignore it. If we don't get peace in the North very soon there is a serious danger of the situation spiralling back to full-scale violence, of a much more bitter and sectarian nature than we have known in the past.
Pray God it will not happen but if it does we should be under no illusion about the likely effects on the island as a whole. At the very least, we, should expect to kiss the economic miracle good-bye and watch the Emerald Tiger bound away to a more congenial part of the international forest.
MULTINATIONAL corporations are rightly attracted by the high educational standards of the young labour force and the quality of life available to them in both parts of this island. But more than either of these, they need a stable environment in which to operate. We have already seen how the increased spending on security has damaged Northern Ireland's economic prospects this year.
This has happened at a time when peace is still, to all intents and purposes, reasonably secure and nothing very dramatic has happened to scare off international investment. That will change, on both sides of the Border, if the absence of political movement increases the threat of a return to violence.
According to the Newsweek article, companies are jostling with each other for space in the International Financial Services Centre in Dublin. Will that happy situation continue if a bomb explodes in a restaurant or bar overlooking the River Liffey?
The North is not a place apart. Its people have shown an extraordinary capacity for generosity and forgiveness. It is they who, somehow, have found within themselves the strength to stop the situation deteriorating into the kind of civil conflict we have seen in Bosnia.
But they are exhausted and dread fully frightened that the hopes for peace may be slipping away. That disappointment and frustration have led to a deepening of sectarian mistrust over the past year, and this makes the search for a settlement that will allow hope for the rebuilding of trust even more urgent. We cannot give up on it.
Gentle - and less gentle - readers: include the North in your thoughts this Christmas when you pray for peace and goodwill to all men and women.