How I’m spending Christmas this year: Cork women tell us their plans

Dr Doireann O’Leary, Cork GP

Dr Doireann O’Leary adores everything associated with the run-up to Christmas including the day itself – but she admits that for the past two years she’s actually taken down her decorations on New Year’s Day, having had her festive fill.

The mum-of-two has their home fully decorated from the beginning of December.

“I go all out – it’s a case of lights, lights, and more lights! I put so much time and effort into it, and I love it. But then, come New Year’s Day it’s like a switch goes off and I can’t relax until they come down!”

She jokes that she feels sorry for her ‘suffering’ husband, and insists that when their two boys are older – they’re now almost two years and 10 months – she’ll change her ways!

Having said that, she more than embraces the festive spirit with all her free time taken up with Santa visits and friend catch-ups.

“The boys are still too young to know what Santa is, but he absolutely visits, and their grandparents will come over on Christmas morning to enjoy that with us. We’re lucky they all live nearby,” said Doireann.

The family-of-four prefer to stay at home on the day itself.

“We’re very much home birds. We’ve never hosted dinner – not yet anyway! I’m not sure I’d be brave enough, or that I’d have the skill-set.

“Peter is the cook in this house and it’s a traditional turkey, and ham which we’ll have at lunchtime. I’m on clean-up duty!”

Doireann, who is a big advocate of the benefits of natural light, said her favourite Christmas Days are those that are “crisp, dry and bright”.

“Hopefully, after lunch, we’ll get out and get some air and get a walk in,” she said.

There’s nothing in particular on her wish list this year and all she really wants is a “peaceful and happy Christmas, time with family, and our health, as clichéd as that sounds.”

Doireann is not a huge fan of resolutions either: “I don’t do them specifically, but I do think it’s a good time to re-evaluate and to take stock.

“Waking up on January 1 and saying you’re never eating sugar again, or that you’re going to exercise for two hours a day, isn’t sustainable.

“Often, it’s a case of small changes making the biggest difference. It doesn’t have to be something punishing either, it could be about getting more fresh air or deciding to meet with friends more often.

“But you have to prepare, if you want change to succeed, and that could start now. So if you want to get more active, why not buy a pair of walking shoes now?

“And it’s also important to identify potential roadblocks and figure out how to overcome them. So, in the case of walking, that could mean having a good jacket on hand.”

Stefanie Preissner, writer

Christmas can be really overwhelming when you’re autistic, says Mallow-raised writer Stefanie Preissner, but over the years she’s learned how to make it tolerable... and even enjoyable!

“Our Christmas is very low key, no visitors, no expectations, no pressure. If you want to stay in your PJs all day, you can.

“You can take a break and go into a room alone if necessary and no-one will get offended,” said Stefanie.

She and her husband Noel are parents to one-year-old Billy and two-year-old Rory so it’s a busy household, regardless of the time of year.

“We are at the lovely point of creating Christmas traditions and shaping the narrative we want around Christmas and Santa.

“We live in a brilliantly diverse neighbourhood where it’s completely normal that not everyonecelebrates Halloween or Christmas, and there are different beliefs, so we will be conscious to highlight that we believe in Santa, and he comes to people who believe in him,” she said.

For dinner, it’s turkey all the way.

“We have a pretty traditional approach to Christmas dinner.

“The turkey goes on in the morning while we are opening presents and dinner happens around 1 or 2 pm.

“We don’t do a big aesthetic table setting. It’s just the regular setting but everyone gets a Christmas cracker!”

Traditions from her own childhood that she’s keeping alive include loads of decorations, Christmas movies in the evenings – Home Alone being the favourite – and a fun advent calendar.’

“We have started new traditions with our own kids like measuring them with ribbon each year and keeping the length of ribbon in a Christmas bauble, and going to the Wonderlights in Malahide Castle which is an absolute dream.”

Stefanie’s favourite part of the day is the Christmas sandwich in the evening ‘once the kids are asleep!’

Anything in particular on her wish list this year?

“If Santa could bring me 8-10 hours of uninterrupted sleep, I’d be very grateful!”

For us, there’s no correlation at all between presents and Christmas. We exchange a gift with each other on New Year’s Eve - perhaps a pair of shoes or something to signify something fresh for the new year - but that’s it really.

Dr Tara Shine, co-founder of Change by Degrees

Christmas Day in Dr Tara Shine’s household in Kinsale is exactly as she likes it.

“We do Christmas Day like we want to do it – really low key, relaxed and all about family, and I’m pretty happy there’s this day in the year that we get to do that,” said the environmental scientist.

She, her husband and their two children will spend the few key festive days “eating and relaxing, playing some new board games, and enjoying some sea swims”.

Festive traditions are important to Tara and many of the decorations on their tree have a story, either collected from around the world on her travels, or coming from her childhood home, or her granny’s tree.

“Another tradition that we uphold, and it’s something we did growing up, is that you all have to wait to go downstairs until everyone is ready. A grown-up must go down first, and put the lights on and make sure everything is ready, then everyone goes down together,” she said.

Tara is not a meat eater so is one of the few people who actually enjoys tucking into their Brussels sprouts!

“My husband is the cook and we’ll have turkey, but no ham, and eat in the late afternoon.

“I don’t eat meat so my favourite is all the veg, the starters and the roast potatoes.I like the accessories rather than the main event,” she said.

Being sustainable is as important to her at Christmas as it is on every other day.

“My advice is to get the focus away from buying stuff, so think experiences over things, where you can buy one good present, rather than lots of rubbish. Also, don’t panic at the last minute and go out and buy more than you need, and remember to avoid all that shiny wrapping paper, Santa never wraps presents, that’s a very important thing to know!”

Her family had their last Christmas tree for an impressive seven years.

“It was in a pot and now it lives in the garden, it looked a bit sad after seven years but is now getting a whole new lease of life in the garden!”

In terms of resolutions, she’s not steadfast about them.

“I wish for the same things every year – that’s for everyone to be healthy and happy, to have a better work-life balance, more time in life, and for lots of time in the outdoors to keep me healthy, sane and happy.”

Sofia Labus, Miss Universe Ireland

Christmas Day will be a day pretty much like any other for Miss Universe Ireland, Sofia Labus, who lives with her mum in Montenotte.

The 22-year-old is an Orthodox Christian, which means she doesn’t celebrate Christmas Day until January 7.

“But because everything is closed here, and I won’t have college, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day will still be nice and relaxing as we’ll be forced to slow down, and I’m looking forward to that.

“I’m not long home from Mexico where I competed in Miss Universe – a fantastic experience – but I’m looking forward to catching up on some sleep now,” said the second-year student of Criminology at UCC.

Sofia was born and bred in Cork but her parents are Serbian and she visits their native country once a year at least.

In fact she’s considering visiting her grandparents there to celebrate Christmas with them this January.

“We have a Serbian tradition where we collect oak branches and let the leaves dry out, and then we light them outside the church on January 6, our Christmas Eve.

“It’s usually snowing and everyone stands around and it’s a lovely atmosphere. We go to Mass again on Christmas Day,” she said.

The idea of gift-giving or consumerism isn’t part of her celebrations at all.

“For us, there’s no correlation at all between presents and Christmas. We exchange a gift with each other on New Year’s Eve – perhaps a pair of shoes or something to signify something fresh for the new year – but that’s it really,” she said.

“Also, in Serbia every family has an association with a saint, ours is St Nicholas whose feast day happens to be on December 19, so on that day we will have a special dinner, and when we were younger we used to leave shoes outside the door and St Nicholas filled them with sweets!”

January 7 will see her mum cook a typical Serbian Christmas meal of pork or lamb, and they’ll enjoy watching some festive films and playing board games, but there’s no emphasis on material things.

“It depends what you grew up with, but I think this pressure to buy things takes away from what Christmas should be about, which is spending time with your family. My religion is important to me and this is something I’ll be passing on to my own family, I hope, in the future.”