Paul Hopkins: Easy on the craic this Christmas now, lads!

Back in the Eighties there was hardly a red-blooded Irish male who was not in love with the wonderful Sally O’Brien and “the way she might look at you” from across the crowded local pub come Christmas week and everyone having the craic as only we Irish know how. Of course, the man longing after the lovely Sally, in the famous TV ad for Harp lager, was, if memory serves me, working on a rig in some far-off land and would not be making it home for Christmas, being thousands of miles from the familiar, cosy confines of his local and the come-hither smile of the woman of his dreams.

God knows where Sally O’Brien (Vicki Michelle of TV’s ‘Allo, ‘Allo! fame) is now or, indeed, yer man on the oil rig but missing too this Christmas will be that wonderful world conjured up by that Eighties TV ad, the world of the Irish local come Christmas, bustling with the craic and seasonal goodwill among family and friends. I can see it and feel it now in the locals up and down the land, lit up like Santa’s grotto: the Christmas jumpers, the camaraderie, the back-slapping, the whispered, and not-so whispered, terms of endearment, the well-wishes and the banter. “Oh, ye are having goose this year” or “Can’t believe it’s Christmas again already.” or “So your Jimmy won’t be coming home this year.”

Alas, you can forget such craic this Christmas with ‘wet’ pubs roundly staying closed and as for the so-called gastro ones, what with social distancing and time-limits, well, it just won’t be the same. Most pertinently will be the thousands of family members who live and work abroad and who won’t be coming home for the holiday and packing out their local Christmas week, familiar faces in the teaming throng.

Sometimes, we don’t know what we have ’til it’s gone. With our favourite locals — for so many their home from home where the victorious are celebrated and the dead are waked, where revolutions are planned and friendships cemented — absent from our lives since March, that adage has never resonated so much for so many. Social drinking in Ireland’s public houses has its history and pervasiveness deeply entrenched in the Irish psyche. The transformative journey from shebeens, ale houses, taverns and inns to the pubs we know today is testament to publicans’ enduring resilience and ability to adapt, even since the Eighties.

Consider too, alcohol is an industry that supports some 92,000 jobs and contributes €2 billion to our economy. One in five adults on this island does not drink, but for the rest of use consumption has trebled since those days in the Eighties when yer man on the rig was thinking of Sally O’Brien and the way she might look at him.

Despite the changes since those days — the drink-driving laws, the smoking ban and the availability of cheaper alcohol in supermarkets — a report for the Vintners Federation of Ireland last year showed that a third of rural pubs reported an increase in turnover but many other rural locals cited being “not confident” or “worried” about their futures. Nine months of lockdown has not helped those worries. And the reality of having to live with Covid-19, as we do with annual flu, despite vaccines, may change the future fabric of pub life and curb our enthusiasm for how we like to interact with each other over a few pints, whatever the cause for celebration.

Easy on the craic now, lads...

With the limits imposed by the pandemic on large gatherings among family and friends at home and elsewhere, neighbourhoods and communities will not be celebrating at large this Christmas. Perhaps, nowhere will that be more marked than by the absence of the gathering in the local pub.

My friend Sara has lived, variously in Michigan and Colorado, for the past almost 30 years ever since she left Ireland, a mere slip of a girl. Down those many years, I always knew it was Christmas week when in the crowded, cosy confines of my local I’d spot the diminutive Sara lost in the celebrations and we’d look over at each other and then, worming our way through the heaving crowd, meet in the middle ... for a Christmas hug.

“What’s the craic, Paul,” she’d say, and break into her beautiful smile.

There’ll be none of that this year. And a virtual hug on social media just isn’t the same