A Christmas cake that arrives in Mid-April

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

Michael Commane

My Christmas cake arrived last Wednesday week. No, I have not lost my mind.

Indeed, it reminded me of fadó fadó when the family turkey would arrive by post in December. My granduncle never failed to send us a turkey for our Christmas dinner.

Back to the story of the April delivery of a Christmas cake. When I first went working at The Kerryman newspaper I became friendly with the mother of a Dominican colleague. Paul Lawlor is a Dominican, now working in Newbridge but spent many years at the Irish Dominican Priory in Tehran. 

I had the great privilege on one occasion to visit Paul in the Islamic Republic of Iran. I visited the holy city of Qom and was also in Isfahan and Shiraz, what a beautiful country and what amazing people.

On my return from Iran I was able to tell Paul’s mother, Lally, all about Paul, the great work he was doing and how he so loved the people and the country. It meant we became great friends and then when she moved to a nursing home I’d regularly call to see her and subsequently met other members of her family. 

I struck up a friendship with her daughter, two other sons and a daughter-in-law. It might have been my charm, but I doubt it, Lally’s daughter-in-law, Marianne at one Christmas went to the great trouble of making me a Christmas cake. 

And ever since it has become ‘custom and practice’ that I have a Christmas cake delivered to my door either immediately before or after Christmas. It’s a treat I have now become accustomed to and indeed, I’d be quite annoyed, I would even take umbrage if Marianne’s cake was not delivered to my door.

It was a given every year before Covid struck. Inter-county travel was prohibited. I couldn’t get to Kerry and Marianne or members of her family could not get to Dublin. During one of the breaks when restrictions were lifted Marianne’s son Cormac went down to Kerry.

He brought the cake back to Dublin just before Christmas. What happens? The five kilometre rule comes into play. We live more than five kilometres apart, so no cake delivery.

Within days of the five kilometre restriction being lifted last month Cormac arrives at my door with his mother’s Christmas Cake. At last I have it. It’s wrapped in many layers of greaseproof paper and tinfoil. Cormac has checked it and assures me it is in perfect condition. And so it is. 

That same evening I do an official cake-cutting ceremony. It’s the usual high standard and now I’m looking forward to Christmas cake-eating in May.

Having taken off the layers of protective covering I go looking for a suitable tin in which to place the cake. I eventually find the very same tin in which my mother kept her Christmas Cake. Older people may remember those green and white round tins with Marsh Mallow written on them.

I’m thinking of my mother, I’m thinking of my granduncle. So much of our lives revolve around our memories and what we did and didn’t do. And then that extraordinary bond with our parents and family. 

A day never passes when I don’t think of my parents.