January 6th, 2006
Happy Women’s Christmas (Nollaig na mBan)
Today is Epiphany, Women’s Christmas or Little Christmas. As Gaeilge that’s Nollaig na mBan or Nollaig Bheag, celebrated mainly in Ireland and Italy. According to Wikipedia:
It is so called because of the tradition (still strong in Cork, though only just surviving in the rest of the country) of Irish men taking on all the household duties on that day and giving their spouses a day off.
Normally I would love something like that but I’m very egalitarian when it comes to housework in that I believe no one should have to suffer it. To mark the day, That Girl asked some of her favourite bloggers to write a piece about the day. As well as myself, Treasa from Winds and Breezes, Lorianne of Hoarded Ordinaries and Maisie were asked to contribute. A male blogger was also asked but hasn’t come up with the goods - a metaphor for avoiding housework perhaps? You can see the pieces together over at Thinking Out Loud but here’s what Nollaig na nBan prompted me to write:
Update: That Girl has added another piece, this time by Da Berries and reckons if anyone else wants to write something, she will include it.
Nollaig Na mBan
Some years ago, the BBC ran an ad featuring one of their most phlegmatic broadcasters pushing former poet laureate John Betjemen along a grassy hilltop. An aerial shot loomed over the solitary figures as Greensleeves played in the background, setting the scene for a philosophical encounter. As the presenter brought Betjemen’s wheelchair to a standstill, he got down on his hunkers reverentially and stroking his chin asked the poet if he had any regrets about his life. Without faltering, Betjemen replied: “Well I would have had a lot more sex.â€? The answer, which was so unexpected, makes the quote all the more memorable. I recall it so readily because a female author (Fay Weldon maybe?) was once asked the same question and answered similarly: “I would have done a lot less houseworkâ€?. These exact sentiments are mine, or they would be if I didn’t only just reach the required quota when it comes to ‘H’ word. In fact, I’m sure there’s a shortfall in the amount I do, but then I’m somewhat allergic to domestic chores. It’s got nothing to do with violent reactions to cleaning products or chronic laziness, it’s much more ingrained than that.
In a nutshell, it’s a horrific obligation, tedious in the extreme, and the biggest sponge of the little free time we all have.
My mother was a stay-at-home mum who had a Nazi-like ethic to housework. Every day she rarely deviated from a well-worn routine of cleaning, washing, ironing and hoovering. When I think of being off sick from school as a child, I recall many things but mostly the sounds and smells of the domestic rota in full swing: Hot water and Flash drifting up the stairs as she mopped the kitchen tiles; the squeak of the ironing board leg as she pressed another shirt; the music from the Gay Byrne radio show, which on days when you weren’t really sick, meant you were home and dry in the pretence. Growing up, the image I have of my mother is of a scrupulously houseproud woman. In our house, there was never a plate out of place, no unfound dust.
As recently as this Christmas, I heard tales of the ‘Christmas clean’, which my dad was co-opted into this year. This gargantuan feat of epic proportions takes place in a house where no one uses the top floor or makes any significant mess that the weekly clean hasn’t already seen to. It includes bizarre rituals like dusting the top of every door and changing the bedding on each bed in an empty house that no one is due to sleep in. These routines are now an intrinsic part of my mother’s life. No one, not even my father would mind if she announced her retirement from housework, but secretly, she would. They have provided a sense of order and achievement.
There is a certain necessity in cleanliness but there are far more things next to Godliness. I cannot comprehend the concept of wasting time ironing when I could be doing something creative, chatting to a friend or discovering something new. Someone once said to me that a job “is something you do, not who you are’â€?. For this reason housework, and all that worthy work that women have done for decades, should be acknowledged as a job, but as an objectionable one that’s kept to a bare minimum and avoided unless absolutely necessary.
Sinéad Gleeson
January 6th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
I’d never heard of this before.
January 6th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Am with you on the oppresssive, time-eating, monster that is ‘house work’. My happiest times are often spent in a caravan in Kerry - where there are far less things to clean, dust, polish, hoover etc etc.
We’ll all be dead soon (he said morbidly) and I don’t want to look back at an alarming percentage of my short span having been spent ironing!
P.S: Have added your excellent blog to my links page…so there…
January 6th, 2006 at 9:08 pm
Happy Epiphany, Sinead. BTW, it’s also widely celebrated in South America also and very much so in Puerto Rico. In fact, NYC is very much party city here in teh US as it has a big Puerto rican poopulation resideing in teh Bronx. And my friend is Puerto Rican, so we’re have a big party to celebrate the Epiphany tonight and my friend Jeanne is bring a delicious Epiphany cake.
Good luck on the blog move.
January 7th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
i never knew that’s where it came from - *hangs head in shame*
January 8th, 2006 at 3:48 am
Sex or housework…really, there’s no choice there!
I’ve always said that my biggest fantasy is to be with two men at once: one to cook, and one to clean.
Happy belated Little Christmas to you!
January 8th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
I’m starting to wonder tho..if it is necessary, maybe it would be better not to find it objectionable? For the lowly housewife, it is what she does and who she is, so maybe there is honour it?
January 8th, 2006 at 5:43 pm
There’s a tidbit on 12th day in the dark side of christmas post on fustar.org, which you might find interesting.
January 8th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
Fústar - thank you for the nice words, I was delighted to come across such a well-written and informative arts blog like yours.
Damian - how was the Epiphany cake?
Lorianne - I like your thinking…Happy birthday to you for the 6th as well.
Sarah - Necessary it may be, but personally (and it’s just me) I’ll never find it anything other than objectionable. Having seen the amount of work my mother put in to our home, I never think of housewives as lowly. It is tough, meritorious work whose value has been overlooked (especially by men) for years. I think the last paragraph in the piece refers to the fact that it is worthy work that should be honoured, but it’s never going to change my contempt for how awful I find it!
January 8th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
First, a confesssion. We, by which I mean ‘my wife and I’, employ a cleaner, a lovely Lithuianian lady who arrives on Wednesday afternoons to do the domestic bits while we are both at work. Not sure if this is PC and fessing up to same certainly isn’t but there you go. Our treasure also, for a few extra dibs, irons my shirts, milady’s smalls and a brace of sheets.
I suppose we ‘rip her off’, meaning we pay her the same modest rate that we paid the previous Irish version who put in an appearance only slightly more regularly than Catherine Zeta Jones visits Ballymun and who performed the appointed chores with the enthusiam a Strasburg goose has for a bucketful of corn. In contrast, Ms Vilnius is thorough and conscientious, fully deserving of the choccies, flowers and bottles of booze we bestow on her from time to time as a bonus for a job well done.
The really curious thing is that, every Wednesday, milady rises from her bed fully three quarters of an hour earlier than the norm in order to ‘get the house ready for the cleaner.’ I have, on many occasions, pointed out the futility of this exercise with similes like ‘having a Rottweiler and barking yourself’. Such wisdom is wont to fall on deaf ears. Nevertheless, considering myself a decent spouse, I eventually rouse myself and join in the ritual, putting CDs back in their cases and transporting socks and jocks to the laundry basket, albeit with the mock begrudgery I consider my right at that unearthly hour.
The modern man in me is inspired by the ancient custom of Nollaig na mBan. Henceforth I vow that, every Epiphany, I shall rise at dawn to ‘get the house ready for for the person who gets the house ready for the cleaner’. No, seriously…
January 11th, 2006 at 12:29 am
Sinead, this year she arrived with an Epiphany pie–Jeanne’s creation. It had a cinnamony mincey pie-ish kind of flavor and delish!!. She makes her own crust, just like my Mum . Everybody was busy scarving the thing, so when I had a chance I sneaked another piece to have the next night while watching the telly.
November 19th, 2008 at 5:06 am
I am writing a research paper on Nollaig na mBan is there anyone that would be willing to do an interview with me via e-mail?