Nostalgia: Holly Bough helps make Christmas

An annual Cork tradition dating back to 1897, it has often been said that it just wouldn’t be Christmas without the Holly Bough.

It has been that way here since 1897, when Victoria was still on the throne, Cork only had a ‘mayor’ – the lordship was still three years in the future – and Irish independence was as yet only a dream.

The oldest copy of the Holly Bough is a literal first edition, from 1897, the original of the species, as it were, and it is in the possession of a family in Canada. The second oldest, a copy of the 1924 edition, is the oldest in the Cork City Terence MacSwiney Library on the Grand Parade.

Looking back at that 1924 Cork Holly Bough, to give it its full name, it is striking how much has – expectedly - changed in a century, but also how the essence of that fine Cork tradition is still – just about - recognisable. The front cover is, of course, red, but – as was the style at the time - it is covered in adverts.

The Munster Arcade – “We appreciate your Patronage” – was offering “Xmas gifts suitable for Ladies & Gentlemen”, including “dressing cases, handbags, umbrellas, perfumes, dressing gowns, silk blouses, silk pillows, coseys, toys, dolls, prams, toy cycles, horses, engines, scooters, [and] mechanical toys”.

Whitehaven Coals featured prominently – “Agent: ED Wrixon, Lapp’s Quay, Cork” – while Fitzgerald The Famous Shirtmaker of 44, Patrick Street offered the invaluable advice that “Men like useful presents” – among them “Gloves, socks, pyjamas, umbrellas, ties and handkerchiefs”.

On page 2, Woodford and Bourne Thompsons of Patrick Street was advertising plum puddings, while Smiths Stores at 99, Patrick Street was offering liqeuer chocolates, assorted chocolates, figs and dates, crystalised fruits, as well as chocolate biscuits, dessert biscuits and crackers.

Pages 3 and 4, which back onto each other, are mostly missing, with a strange, almost half Christmas tree section torn away. Pages 5 and 6 have the tail-end of a story featuring John de Courcy and an otherworldly visitation in Ballinspittle.

There are fiction pieces such as ‘How Christmas came to Nightingale Farm’, ‘The Haunted House, by MP Willcocks’, ‘At First Sight’, by Ruby M Ayers”, and ‘The love story of Father Christmas’, by Lady Gibbs”.

There’s a humourous piece – which admittedly loses something in the century’s retelling – entitled ‘Young Moore’s Almanack for 1925’ and a feature called ‘Christmas in South Africa, by a West Cork man’.

The 1924 Cork Holly Bough is only 32 pages in length, unlike its 2024 descendant, which has 164 pages.

The 1924 edition also lacks a Diffney Quiz, a film quiz, or a Holly Bough crossword.

What is immediately obvious, to this reader at least, is that if you ignore the adverts, in 1924 the Cork Holly Bough did not seem to have a particularly Cork identity at all. There is no sense of a celebration of Cork, of its history, of its character, or of its characters.

Perhaps the Holly Bough of 1924 belonged to a smaller Cork, or perhaps the Cork of 2024 is more confident in itself and belongs to a different world, one in which Cork is still only a small city but which believes much more in its own place in that world.

Last year, the Foley family presented their copy of the 1932 Holly Bough, the third oldest edition known to be in existence, to the Terence MacSwiney Library.

As then Holly Bough editor John Dolan noted at the time, the 1932 edition is historically significant, as it was the last Holly Bough to be published by the Cork Constitution before the Tivy family sold it to The Echo and Examiner group in 1933, for £200.

Perhaps, in 2124, The Echo will do a Nostalgia piece looking back at this year’s edition of the Holly Bough. In the meantime, though, you can get your copy in shops now, or on Oliver Plunkett Street, from Dave Hogan, the last of Cork’s Echo Boys.