An Irish Country Christmas [Hardcover]

Alice Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1995

The author recounts Christmas stories from her childhood in the snowy Irish countryside, capturing the sights and sounds of holiday festivities among her family, beginning with the lighting of the Christmas candle.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Taylor (To School Through the Fields) has written a memoir of a County Kerry Christmas as seen through her own nine-year-old eyes. First there is the fattening of the pet-like geese. Their execution and plucking follows. Then the countdown to Christmas begins: waiting for the "master" to let the children know when the school holiday is to begin; the letters to Santa; the preparation of the Christmas chimney for Santa by the sweep, Black Ned; the hunt for holly; the housing of the farm animals for the winter; and the house cleanup in readiness for the big day. Finally, Christmas arrives with mass and a "Happy Birthday" to the infant Jesus. The holiday ends with the hunt for the wren-bird one day later on St. Stephen's Day. With liberal sprinkling of the Irish language, neighbor Mrs. Casey's tales of supernatural Christmases past and the family's thought of soft barm bracks, Taylor has written a tender remembrance of a simpler, yet harder, time past.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

This is a perfect matching of subject and author, for what time of the year evokes more wistful nostalgia than Christmas, and who is more skillful at evoking childhood's innocent sensuality, the basis of that nostalgia? Taylor's charm-drenched memoir never, despite its sugarplumminess, cloys or becomes saccharine. Its chapters are like late-Victorian holiday cards, festive and cheerful and replete with natural symbols. We meet the Christmas geese, before and after plucking (the actual foul play takes place offstage, in the basement, where Mom handles the butchery). Silent, skinny Black Ned comes to sweep the chimney, precipitating an orgy of house cleaning and decorating. The family traipses through the blackthorn hedges to find the perfect branches. Mail from far-off America arrives, sometimes bearing curious presents. The family gathers around the sweet turf fire, raises glasses, and cheers in the New Year. These are holidays as everyone wishes they could remember them. Patricia Monaghan

Product Details

• Hardcover: 134 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (October 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312135238
• ISBN-13: 978-0312135232
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,050,732 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful Christmas book, November 22, 1999

By 

Sue J (Chicago, Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Irish Country Christmas (Hardcover)

This is my favorite book about Christmas. Ms. Taylor makes you feel like you are part of her Irish family, and makes Christmas in Ireland seem like a very special place.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and heart-warming book!, December 15, 2009

By 

BRIAN A. O'DELL "njsquarebear" (Cliffside Park, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: An Irish Country Christmas (Hardcover)

It is truly unfortunate that this book was allowed to go out of print, and that only second-hand copies are available. It is truly an excellent little book... the kind (since the chapters are fairly short) that you can read in bed at the end of day, turn out the lights, and drift off to pleasant dreams of simple, country Christmas in green Ireland with gentle hills, newly fallen snow, and the the old stone homestead, where the hearth is warm after doing one's share of farm duties in the brisk December air, and all the loving family is abuzz getting ready with eager anticipation for the upcoming Christmas holidays!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Irish Christmas, November 14, 2009

By 

I Am Celt "Liz" (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: An Irish Country Christmas (Hardcover)

The author brings you home with her, using vibrant descriptions to put you in the middle of the action. I feel a great pull toward Ireland, land of my ancestors, and reading this book made me feel a bit "homesick," if you can understand that. In other words, it was like being there.