School: Áth Dara (C.)

Location:
Adare, Co. Limerick
Teacher:
Máire Boardman
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0506, Page 062

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0506, Page 062

Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.

See copyright details.

Download

Open data

Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

  1. XML School: Áth Dara (C.)
  2. XML Page 062
  3. XML “Festival Customs - Christmas Eve Customs”

Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.

On this page

  1. Christmas Eve Customs.
    Christmas eve is the name given to the day before Christmas day and there are many customs connected with that day.
    It is a custom for every child in the district of Adare to write a letter to Santa Claus, an old man dressed in a red coat and a red cap trimmed with white fur, who is supposed to come all the way from the North pole to Ireland for to spend Christmas and to give presents to all the good children. In Adare the children write their letters to him some days before Christmas, asking him for certain presents, then on Christmas eve night when they are going to bed they hang up their stockings. Then in the middle of the night when they are all asleep he comes down the chimney and fills their stockings with the presents which they asked him for in their letters.
    On Christmas eve it is a custom for everybody to decorate their houses with holly, ivy and other evergreens.
    On Christmas eve and Christmas night it is a custom to light a large candle and leave it lighting in the window.
    (continues on next page)
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Topics
    1. events
      1. events (by time of year) (~11,476)
        1. Christmas (~455)
    Language
    English
    Collector
    Clarrie Alfred
    Gender
    Female
    Age
    14
    Address
    Cummeen, Co. Limerick