Real nuns and Christmas

JEAN'S JOURNAL WITH JEAN FARRELL

Has the hype and hope about Christmas exhausted you? The following may make it all worthwhile. I came upon it recently.

“Your children will do what you did. They don’t know it yet, but when they’ve grown and starting their own Christmas traditions, you will be their mirror. Your family recipes will grace their table. They’ll play the carols that feel like home, that feel like you. Their children’s handmade snowmen and reindeer will be hung with pride, just like theirs were, and carrots will be nibbled on Christmas Eve in the same way you did all those years ago. When they think of Christmas it will you they copy, you they remember, you they want to be for their own children. You are their memories, you are their magic, you are their Christmas.”

This is true. However, some customs will hopefully not follow from generation to generation. One I can think of is the tradition of cleaning the whole house, very thoroughly, before Christmas. A reader stopped me in the street and told me something I hadn’t heard before. She said that the reason homes were cleaned so thoroughly was in case Jesus, Mary and Joseph called on their way home from Bethlehem. “As if!” commented her bored surly teenager daughter, who was listening!

The tradition of placing a candle in the windows was also in case Mary and Joseph were lost in the darkness. However now, after 2,023 years, we can accept that they won’t come calling, so let’s ease up on all this cleaning! We have more than enough to do, otherwise.

Let’s prepare our hearts and minds instead for the coming of The Lord.

A story about nuns next! When we were in national school all the nuns dressed like the two in this photograph. Their habits were floor length and they wore white bibs to hide their bosoms. Their veils limited their vision and the white stiff material around their faces often irritated them. We’d see nuns pull it away from their chins and foreheads. It looked like hard cardboard.

A few years ago, when we were about to present ‘The Six Marys’ play, we desperately wanted to get a habit just like this. A fictitious nun called Sister Immaculata plays a big part in the show.

Well, it was impossible to find such a habit anywhere. When we googled ‘nuns habits’ online all we saw were sexy nuns habits, for fancy dress parties.

Friends had aunts who were nuns. They contacted the convents for us, but were told that all the old habits had been thrown out ages ago. So, we had to make do with a homemade one in our play.

Last Sunday, as I was walking into The Radisson hotel, what did I see coming towards me only a ‘real’ nun? She was dressed from head to toe in an old fashioned habit. I decided that she was at a fancy dress party and had managed to get one of the genuine old habits somewhere.

Just as I was about to stop and ask her where she had bought it, I realised that there were more nuns around the foyer too. These were all laughing and chatting away together. I decided, immediately, because they were Irish and young, that they must be hen-party group, all dressed as nuns. Where did they get the great habits, I wondered, enviously.

Being my mother’s daughter, I got into chat with one of them. Much to my great surprise, I discovered that they were in fact ‘real’ nuns, from The Poor Clare Order, in Galway. They were on their way to a conference in Maynooth, a fresh faced nun in her early 40s told me. They had stopped in Athlone for their lunch.

As I sat, in the foyer, waiting for my pal to come in, I studied these nuns in great detail. Their full-length habits were brown, as they are a Franciscan order. They wore white all around their faces and bosoms, exactly like the nuns in the photo. However, the material wasn’t hard cardboard, it was soft white cotton cloth. Their big veils weren’t quite as big as our old nuns. Otherwise, they resembled them in every way.

What struck me most was how jolly these nuns were, as they laughed and chatted together. It suddenly struck me that The Poor Clares are an enclosed order and don’t go out at all. I decided that they were in great humour because of the fact that they had ‘escaped’ for the day.

My friend arrived and she happened to be a Galway girl. What she had to say was very interesting. She told me that The Poor Clare nuns are very well respected in Galway. Her mother, a devout Catholic, had been greatly distressed in her later years. She went, very regularly, to visit these nuns. They were kindness itself, my friend told me. They listened to her mother. They prayed with her and helped her greatly.

My pal said that she has often been in their convent, accompanying her mother. She told me that the nuns there always seem to be good humoured and very much at peace. A lot of Galway people visit them, asking for their prayers. “I’d honestly say that those nuns are a lot happier than many a woman,” she said. “They have an inner peace that comes from their great faith.”

I left the hotel and walked home with much to ponder on.

I hope that you will have a peaceful Christmas, dear readers.

Take heart and take it easy.