Four Cork women tell us about their plans for Christmas 

Cork singer and actress Claudia Rose Long

Christmas is a busy time for me - I’ve just finished my own show in Clancy’s, a Christmas display with our performing arts school, The ACA Performing Arts, which was held in Mahon Point, and have just finished up rehearsals with a school for their show after Christmas.

But I absolutely love this time of year, I always have, and always will. I’m an only child, and growing up, people always asked was it lonely at Christmas, but it never felt that way. I would wake my parents up every Christmas morning and pull them downstairs, and still do now, even with my own little boy, Romeo.

I don’t think he fully understands Christmas yet, however, he loves the songs and to dance along. He has an Advent calendar this year and gets excited every morning to go and open it and have chocolate for breakfast!

Probably my favourite festive song to perform is Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. I think it’s a nostalgic one that really makes it feel like Christmas.

Christmas will be spent in my parents’ house with them and my husband Sean, and Romeo. We are living with them while we’re renovating. Hopefully, our house will be ready to move in to by January which is so exciting. I’ve designed the house around the idea of hosting, so hopefully we can host Christmas next year!

For dinner, we do the usual three courses, soup or chicken vol au vents, then turkey, ham, stuffing, vegetables, roasties, mash, cauliflower cheese and pigs in blankets. For dessert, it’s cheesecake, pavlova or banoffee pie, or all three!

We have a few traditions – on Christmas Eve we go to town and get a Butler’s hot chocolate and then go to my aunt’s afterwards and exchange our gifts, but don’t open them until the next day. Also, my uncle used to take us around, and we’d go looking at all the houses and their Christmas lights.

For me, Christmas is all about family. It’s probably a cliche, but every Christmas I feel so grateful when I’m surrounded by them, and we’re all laughing and singing songs, and it just makes me remember what the day really is all about.

My grandmother passed away this year, and she is so missed. Christmas will be a hard one because we used to go to her house after dinner and play games until after midnight. We’ll still do that this year as she lived with my aunt, uncle and cousins, but she’ll be on our minds the whole day.

Every Christmas memory has her amazing light in them.

Catherine Mahon-Buckley, CEO of CADA Performing Arts; director and producer of Cinderella, currently running at The Everyman until January 11. See www.everymancork.com

This Christmas is my 30th year directing and producing the pantomime at The Everyman. It all started in 1995 when The Everyman did not have the finances to put on a Christmas show. My husband Ted was on the Board of Directors. I remember sitting in my kitchen when he asked would I be interested in taking on the project.

I had roughly about £100 to my name, but the idea excited me and the type of person I am – I jump into the deep sea and then realise I must swim. I took on the challenge and what an ordeal it was – I had a cast of 1,000, and I roped all my family into the production. My mum, along with our great costume mistress Ann Burton, designed and made the costumes. My dad did front of house and programmes. Ted did the administration and friends did several jobs.

My first pantomime was Cinderella and the wonderful actress Linda Kent played Cinderella alongside Jim Mulcahy and Paul Dennehy, who played the step sisters. I had a wonderful mentor who encouraged, supported and advised me in Michael Twomey. That year, I was afraid to buy a pair of tights because I didn’t know if I could afford them! To everyone’s delight, we broke even and so the wonderful journey of pantomime continued to grow and prosper.

Right up to press night, I am there writing notes, improving on the show. I call in on a regular basis – I tell the cast the 49th show is just as important as the first. Performances and the show must be kept at the highest level. And as soon as this panto opens, discussions begin for the next year!

As soon as I am happy with the production, the focus is on my personal Christmas. Christmas Day is spent with Ted’s family – a tradition from his mum’s time and which his sister Eileen continues. St Stephen’s Day is in Ted’s sister Mary’s house. I hold a Christmas celebration which includes Santa Claus, games, fun, laughter and food and drinks.

I am blessed with great energy – I am like a Duracell bunny – turn me on and I go, go, go. But I am delighted to say I am waited on by Eileen and Pat, her husband, and to my credit, I do prepare the starters!

Festive traditions I love to keep include boiling a piece of spiced beef on Christmas Eve just to have the smell wafting through the house; attending a midnight service on Christmas Eve, and going to at least two carol concerts, as well as meeting up with friends and family… before it’s back to work on the pantomime on the 27th!

Very Rev Susan Green, Dean of Cloyne

I think Christmas has a wonderful message of hope as God reaches out to all of us with love, openness and tenderness, personified in the love of a mother and her child. I love the happiness and joy of it, the excitement of the children, the wonder of Santa, and the pleasure in giving and receiving presents, though I hate the wrapping of them!

I also love the traditional meaning of Christmas, that God comes to us in a vulnerable, tiny, homeless baby, born to a poor, socially uncertain couple who soon afterwards become refugees. It speaks to me that God accepts us all unconditionally, no matter our social or economic status, and loves us no matter what.

It is a busy time of year, there are lots of annual events as well as extra church services. But it is a lovely way to renew connections.

There are always some for whom Christmas is difficult, whether financially or through loneliness, and the number of people in need increases annually at the moment too, as families seek to try and make ends meet at an expensive time of year.

My husband, Andrew Orr (Archdeacon of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, who works in Youghal Union of parishes and Midleton College) and I will both be working in our parishes on Christmas morning but then in the afternoon we will have a traditional Christmas dinner, as well as a traditional snooze on the couch!

This year will be a bit different for us. We have three adult children, two daughters and a son, and one much adored three-year-old grandson. Our daughters are not coming to us until after Christmas so Christmas Day, we will be three, with our son.

One of our festive traditions is to cook our ham on Christmas Eve and then have some for supper after we get back from Midnight Communion. We also delay present giving (but not Santa!) until after morning church.

For dinner, we tend to go for a smallish turkey and a biggish ham and love having lots of leftovers so we can chill out for the next day too. We are a divided house when it comes to spiced beef … but we always have some!

West-Cork based chef Caitlin Ruth

For me, Christmas is an opportunity to stop and to celebrate family, friends and food – and a time to rejoice that the longest night of the year has passed.

I’m not religious, and we don’t do Christmas gifts (except food-based gifts), but I do love cooking the big dinner, hanging out with friends and family, and seeing people who’ve come home for the holidays from abroad.

I’m not re-inventing the wheel when it comes to our Christmas dinner. We don’t bother with a starter, because dinner is so massive, but this year we’ll have Paper Plane cocktails to start. Then it’ll be an organic turkey, legs removed from the crown, boned and stuffed, and of course we brine the turkey crown, which makes all the difference.

We’ll have a baby pumpkin stuffed with pecans and cornbread, and like 10 other vegetable sides – including broccoli in cheese sauce with baby onions, roasted carrots and parsnips, celeriac purée, green beans with almonds, caramelised shallots, two or three kinds of potato, and Brussels sprout slaw along with cranberry confit for the turkey and gravy… lots of gravy! It’ll be made from a mix of turkey stock, chicken stock and white wine.

And for afters, sherry trifle (no jelly). I traditionally make a panforte (the chewy, spicy, honeyed Italian dessert) for a Christmas cake, but I didn’t get around to it this year. I’ll order something Christmassy from my friend Shannen in Diva Bakery in Ballinspittle.

My number one tip is to rest that turkey before slicing. And if you don’t have a probe thermometer, get one for next year. Take the turkey out of the oven when the turkey reads 68°C (probe into the thickest part of the leg) and leave it rest, tented with foil, until the temperature of the turkey reaches 74°C. You’ll be guaranteed a juicy (and safe) bird this way.

One of my stand-out festive memories is from a few years ago, when we parked a little vintage Thomson caravan in front of the house for the Christmas season, decked it out with sparkling lights and shiny decorations, and had a little fondue party inside.

And one of our festive traditions is to have a baked Mont d’Or and champagne on Christmas Eve, and I hope to continue that this year, along with a midweek night out on the run up to Christmas in the wonderful Monk’s Lane in Timoleague.