A Lonely Time of Year.

By NiallO’Dowd

THERE is no time of the year that is lonelier for an exile than the Christmas season. Growing up in Ireland, the notion of the family Christmas becomes so deeply ingrained that it seems impossible to imagine a Yuletide separated from family and friends.

When I came to America first, in 1979, I stayed for four years and never went home for all the obvious reasons. I loved my adopted country, but found myself incredibly morose and lonely at Christmas time.

Perhaps it was because I was then living in California and the Christmas season was somewhat farcical, as it is difficult to celebrate when the temperature is reaching the high 80s and the Santa Clauses you meet are dripping with sweat.

But it was more the absence of friends and family that hit deep. As the poet remarked, “The savage loves his native shore,” and he loves it even more at Christmas time. It is the child in all of us we remember, the insane excitement over Santa Claus and the happy memories we carry all through our lives. 

Just read A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas, to revisit that magic time. It closes with the following paragraphs: 

“Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang ‘Cherry Ripe,’ and another uncle sang ‘Drake’s Drum.’ It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird’s Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. 

“Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.”

Even now when I hear a choir of young people sing “Silent Night” it brings with it so many fond memories. I remember my parents organizing us around the fireside as night crept in and the carolers on the streets outside singing that most beautiful of Christmas songs. All indeed was calm, all indeed was bright.

I am sorry for all the young Irish who will not be able to go home for Christmas this year. As our lead story this week reveals, toughened immigration policies have made it far more difficult to leave and come back to the U.S. unscathed.

It is a horrible decision for these young Irish to decide to stay here, far from family and hearth, and make it through the Christmas season on their own. 

Then there is the abominable American custom of going back to work the day after Christmas. I know this country is the greatest economic engine in the world, but working so soon after Christmas is a crazy tradition.

In Ireland, nobody shows up for work between Christmas Eve and the day after New Year, and everyone visits everyone else. There is family time like at no other time of the year and strangers are welcome in every home. 

It will be very hard for those who would love to go home this year. Because of the immigration rules, it is not even possible to say when they can next go home, unless they intend to leave for good. 

I know them. They are decent, hardworking people who have given a lot, as the Irish always have in this country. 

It is a crying shame that they are treated as common criminals now. Somehow we have failed them in being unable to find someway to allow them to return back and forth like generations before them.

In my own case it was Christmas that finally drove me back home to family and friends after missing four holidays. On one occasion I was ill on Christmas Day and spent it alone in an empty apartment. That was it, I thought to myself. I was determined to make it home the next year and I did, and ever since for at least part of the celebration.

My greatest wish this year is that the young Irish today can soon do the same. We will have failed as a community if we are unable to provide that.