Hello Santa

This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.

Michael commane

Dear Santa,

I’ve been thinking about you these last days and confusion is swirling inside my head.

I’m 70, fortunately still in paid employment, doing a job I like. I live on my own and happen to be a Catholic priest. Was ordained a priest the day the German football team beat the Dutch in the World Cup in Munich on July 7, 1974.

I’m an Irish Dominican. Joined the Dominicans straight after school. Over the years I have met a number of extraordinary Dominicans.

These days I’m working as a hospital chaplain and live on my own, within a ten-minute walk of the hospital. It’s customary for Dominicans to live in community. Just a few of the men Dominicans live on their own, while a number of Dominican Sisters live outside convents.

But in these days before Christmas. of course I’m thinking of you and all the fun and excitement you brought me when I was a child.

It was the one time in the year that my father stoked over the fire so that it would be lighting when we got up the next morning. It’s something I still do on occasion, and looking at it before heading off to bed, I think of him and my mother. 

Dad’s father was born in West Kerry, went working in the creamery in Ballybofey in Donegal, where my father was born in 1909. Dad left Donegal at six but still had a Donegal accent at 95. 

My mother was born near Thurles in Tipperary. She left the county in her late teens but I never detected a Tipperary accent and certainly when she died at 78 there was not a single Tipperary vowel sound in her speech. Then again, the Donegal accent seems to stick with people as does no other, maybe with the exception of the Kerry accent. In my job as hospital chaplain I take great delight in spotting Donegal, Kerry and Tipperary accents.

Santa, aren’t we all steeped in our ancestry? 

Watching the Christmas hyper these days I’m scratching my head and wondering what it’s all about.

The whole purpose of Christmas is to celebrate and recall the birth of Jesus Christ. He’s the man, whom Christians believe and say is God. An extraordinary thing to say and yet it’s been on the lips of people for over 2,000 years.

In the last 20, 30 years or so, more and more people in Ireland and the western world have waved bye bye to the story of Jesus. Though, I can vividly recall my mother in the 1950s forecasting the demise of the Catholic Church in Ireland. 

Wasn’t it former Labour government minister Ruairi Quinn at a venue in the US, who spoke about a post Catholic Ireland? 

Santa, many things perplex me but right now I simply am awestruck by the furore that Christmas is causing. City traffic is at a standstill, every radio programme is advising how to cook the turkey. 

Every media outlet is recommending books to read, food to eat, wine to drink.

Santa, I know you’ll find all the homeless families and their children this Christmas and bring them gifts in the midst of a world obsessed with in-your-face consumerism. 

And then I find a gem. I read about the newly appointed Austrian bishop in Klagenfurt-Gurk, who opposes compulsory celibacy. He says: ‘It is extremely difficult to lead a dignified life in old age without a family’. 

Santa, Bishop Josef Marketz is talking sense this Christmas.

Thank you.