Throwback Thursday: When Santa used to parade along Pana

It’s that time of year when the big man with the white beard and the jolly laugh is eagerly awaited in every home, but hundreds of children also get to meet his helpers in various locations around the city and county in the run-up to the big day.

Who remembers going to see Santa in Cork in bygone days? You (or rather your parents) had to have the spare bit of cash for that, of course, but for those fortunate enough, it created a life-long memory.

Santa and the cinema at the Munster Arcade, where they showed that breathtaking film of The Night Before Christmas. Santa and the big slide at Kilgrews. Who remembers all the others?

Psychologists today worry in case visiting these store Santas creates confusion in childish minds, but we feel it never was, still isn’t, a problem. Kids knew perfectly well it was a stage Santa and the real man wouldn’t let himself be seen like that in public.

Indeed, you needed to be in bed with your eyes tight shut on Christmas Eve to be sure of getting the stocking filled.

Helen O’Neill and her brothers, Pat and Tony, from East Cork, met Santa on Patrick Street back in the 1950s, and she generously shared the picture with us. (That image is bittersweet to Helen, as Tony, the lad on the right with the cone, passed away last year from Alzheimer’s.)

If you didn’t have the wherewithal to visit Santa in a shop, and get a gift, you could always have your picture taken with a roaming Santa in the street and keep that as a special memory.

Who remembers those end-of-term concerts held in many junior schools, and the delight (or terror) of having to give your party piece to the assembled multitude?

“At Miss Cahill’s little private primary school on Summerhill (4, Empress Villas, the address is engraved on my heart), we always had a Christmas concert before breaking up,” remembers Katie O’Brien.

“We would stand in a line against the sideboard (Miss Cahill’s living room was the classroom) and recite or sing our individual pieces before launching into the great group piece, The Night Before Christmas.

“This was a mix of song and recitation, partly incorporating carols but a lot of it, I think, written by Miss Cahill herself, and we gave it full justice, the excitement and anticipation of the season creating an incredible atmosphere. I can still feel that excitement even today.”

O’er Bethlehem that wintry night

The stars were shining very bright,

And every house was full and gay,

Such crowds of people gathered there.

But who is this comes down the street,

A gentle maiden sweet and meek,

St Joseph knocks at every door,

Harsh voices shout ‘No room for more!’…

Brian Cronin also recalls one such concert at his school: “I would have been nine going on ten on the eve of Christmas, 1953, when the annual pre-Christmas concert in our school, Christian Brothers College, took place. The original college was only a stone’s throw from our home in the Park View Hotel on the Lower Glanmire Road.

“Our music teacher in ‘Christian’s’ was a Mr Michael O’Callaghan, who moulded together a fairly decent choir of 50-odd boys.

“Michael was a gifted musician and selected four of us boy sopranos to sing at the occasional High Mass in our local St Patrick’s Church on the Lower Road. He was a kindly and gentle teacher, prone to burst into tears on occasions when overcome with emotion.

“I recall when the class decided to put our pennies together to buy him a record prior to that Christmas concert of 1953. The song was ‘Robin Hood, Robin Hood riding through the glen,’ and Michael duly burst into tears on hearing the record played for the first time in our music room.

“He also selected me, to my great excitement, to sing solo in the 1953 Christmas concert.”

Brian adds: “Christmas was always a very special time in our little hotel, and as well as decorating the upper floors, we kids were allowed to help ‘do up’ the public bar and the ‘saloon’ which also sported a piano.

“We purchased a large Christmas tree on the Coal Quay, so large indeed that it required both my brother and an older cousin plus myself to carry it all the way home to the Lower Road.

“We later walked down to a large field in Tivoli that sported numerous pine trees. The pine cones which we painted gold and silver were a perfect accompaniment to the other baubles which we suspended from the tree.

“The girls made up all sorts of trinkets, including gold stars, to complete the picture.

“Lastly, we rooted out the crib which had been carefully stored away from the previous Christmas. The only casualty was one of the donkeys who had lost a leg, but the addition of a bit of plasticine did the trick and he was soon as good as new. The three wise men, of course, had to be secreted away until their turn came to arrive at the crib some two weeks later.”

Regular Throwback Thursday contributor Mícheál Kenefick has noticed how Santa and his gifts have changed over the years.

“Willie Shakespeare wrote a poem called The Seven Ages Of Man in which he described the complete rounding of the circle of life. I can only account for four ages of Santa, but it will be interesting to see if that circle will be completed by my grandchildren and great-grandchildren,” he said.

“Long before Santa got his new clothes from Coca Cola, he was bringing presents to the children of the world. He came to my mother shortly after the turn of the last century. He surely came to my father’s family too, but dad never mentioned it. (Maybe he felt it wasn’t a manly thing to remember?).

“My mother would get an apple and an orange in her stocking, and also something practical like an apron or a knitted jumper or cardigan. Those were harder times and gifts had to be useful, hard-won as they were from much penny-pinching beforehand.

“By the time it was our turn in the early 1950s,” recalls Micheál, “Santa Claus had reached his Pinocchio period. We got a wonderful variety of wooden toys such as a wheelbarrow, doll’s house, rocking horse, doll’s cot, hobby horse, and, one year, a fantastic yacht.

“I still have some of them today, including the yacht (which once took off from the sawmills in Whitegate when the string broke and was rescued between Corkbeg and The Long Point by Sonny Holligan.) I must give it a lick of paint one of these days.

“And that rocking horse still slides back and forth, after all this time. Didn’t Santa have some skillful elves in that workshop of his all the same?”

Micheál continues: “Dykes, who lived next door to us in the Middle Road, had a little stool with which I was intrigued when I was a child. I would visit him regularly just to sit on it.

“Amazingly, Santa brought me an almost identical one the next Christmas! Now how did he know?

“In later years, we got a shop-made stocking also (the North Pole economy must have picked up a little), which was a white mesh type of thing containing mostly a substance like sawdust just for filling. It would also contain something like a yoyo that didn’t yo, and one of these coiled up blowers that made a screeching noise and uncoiled as one blew into it.

“Neither lasted the day - and yet those lovingly-crafted wooden toys have lasted more than 70 years.

“I don’t ever remember writing to him in the ’50s, so either he knew what we wanted or we got a surprise.

“Of course, going to visit one of his helpers who popped up in Cork city at this season was the equivalent of a quick trip to Boston or New York today. We never got to go.

“We did, though, hear the great man himself on the wireless on Christmas Eve with his booming HO HO HO voice calling out a list of names of children whose houses he was going to visit later.

“We would be terrified, and even more terrified going to bed as there was always a light in the sky flickering to warn us of the impending visit.

“When the turn of my younger siblings, Síle and Ruairí, came, he had progressed to tricycles and bikes, snooker tables, Barbie dolls with a variety of outfits, and a yoke called Mr Frosty which was supposed to crush ice to make homemade Slush Puppies, but required the strength of Charles Atlas to operate it so the five-year-old had no chance.

“Fair play to him, though, he always brought a book or two.

“I can still remember asking one Christmas morning, ‘What did he bring?’ The answer was, ‘a snooker table but he forgot the balls’. The balls were found later in the spare room (there’s delusions of grandeur for you, as we had only the one room in the Middle Road called ‘the room’ and in the village we had the big room and the small room) - but we never knew what he was doing in the spare room or how he got in as it was locked for the month of December.

“This was also the age when the Big Man got ‘watered and fed’ for the first time, as a drop of the hard stuff and a bit of cake was left on the mantelpiece for him, and a carrot for Rudolf, but not a bite or a sup for Dancer and Prancer or the rest of the team. (They were dead right not to let the Red-Nosed one join in the Reindeer games!).

“Signs that our own economy was picking up a bit, if we were able to spare the bit extra to sustain Santa.”

Micheál adds: "So now we come to the fourth age of Santa, the current era, and he has now graduated to the age of electronic ‘toys’ with strange-sounding names like i-pod and X Box and Nintendo Wii; and computer games which children stare at trance-like for endless hours.

“When we, as adults, get to meet his helpers who are everywhere from early December, we must tell them to remind Santa not to forget footballs and hurleys and tennis racquets, so as to encourage children to play in the open air. But, to be fair to him, he still brings a few books.

“Finally, after the mobile phone that talks and will soon eat your dinner for you, we can’t be far from the flying car or being able to fly ourselves.

“But I realise now what I must do next. I’m going out to the shed to have one rub off the rocking horse.”

Send us your Christmas memories: Email jokerrigan1 @gmail.com or leave a message on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/echolivecork.