Christmas In Dublin - UL Students Song Release

Christmas In Dublin came to me in a flow of lyrics and melody, months before the pandemic hit. I picked the melody out on an old keyboard someone gifted me, I don’t play an instrument. I’m in year 2 of an MA Creative Writing at UL. I was thrilled to collaborate with Niall Teague, an MA in Songwriting Student at UL in Summer ’21. Niall composed and arranged the music. I hadn’t known until I began working with Niall that his song Santa Claus won the Hard Rock Cafe Christmas FM Song Contest, 2019 so Niall has form! Niall has recorded extensively, including his EP Taobh le Taobh, 2020. I launched my poetry album The Broken Timbers Speak also in 2020. We’re thrilled to have renowned folk singer, Anne Brennan (of The Brennan Sisters) singing our song.

I spent my 25th birthday in New York with my Aunt Myra. She had emigrated in her youth as had my mother’s mother and four of her six siblings. Married and divorced in California, Myra never had children and moved to Manhattan to start afresh. On her bi-annual visits home to Dublin, Myra poured her love onto her nieces and nephews and we adored her.

Myra had arranged with my family to bring me to New York for my 25th birthday – 21st December. I arrived on the 14th to a city dressed in Christmas trees and lights. In her living room, Myra had created a circular arrangement of twelve tiny, gift-wrapped parcels, attached by thread to one another. They were for me, one for each of the twelve days of Christmas – rigged so I couldn’t cheat.

Myra had to work up to Christmas day but every evening we’d snuggle up on the couch with egg-nog and nibbles and plan our evenings viewing. The Christmas dinner plan gave her great pleasure. She wanted everything she’d have had in the Ireland of her childhood – goose, her mother’s stuffing, carrots and parsnips with turnips and country butter, mashed. I had smuggled in my sister’s Christmas cake.

My birthday weekend was magical, we visited the Rockefeller centre to watch the skaters and Saks Fifth avenue Christmas window. For a few days, I was the child she never had and I loved seeing her joy. We reminisced about Grafton Street, Switzers window, the flower-sellers, Moore Street stalls. On my birthday, we went to an Irish friend’s house in Connecticut. It snowed heavily. We stayed over and early next Morning, Myra took the train to Manhattan to work.

That evening, I got a taxi back. A police car, sirens flashing, was parked outside her building. Myra was dead. Fifty years old - an aneurism. My heart-broken mother arrived on Christmas Eve. We had Christmas dinner in an Irish bar. We sang Danny Boy at Myra’s church service on Stephens Day, then brought her home to Dublin.

I still love Christmas. My mother made it magical as children. We had rituals, traditions, a visit to the beach with my father Christmas mornings while my mother cooked. Myra died the 22nd December. Years later, my mother died on the 23rd and their brother on the 24th. Christmas brings up all sorts of feelings for people; loneliness for those gone or far away, joy at re-uniting with others.

I moved to Clare 22 years ago. I’m lucky to have family to go to. While Christmas In Dublin specifies a city, the sentiment is universal – the longing of emigrants or those far from home. My parents were economic migrants for a number of years. Christmas in Ireland is not a day, it’s a season. Maybe because of the bereavements so close to Christmas, the nostalgia for home is strong. Christmas in Dublin is written from the point of view of the one who is away from home but it’s also about those left behind.

Niall and I both had family bereavements since commencing the collaboration so production was delayed but it will be released early in December. Huge thanks are due to Professor Joseph O’Connor and Carl Corcoran of UL for facilitating introductions and ongoing support.

FB page: Christmas In Dublin

Twitter: @deirdredevally. @TeagueNiall.

Ph: 087-3922538