The Christmas Fair idea is a huge success in other cities

When all the debate is ended – the first over whether there should be a Christmas Fair in Galway, and then the price of being part of it – let’s hope that, when it goes ahead, it proves to be an enormous success.

I prefer to call it a Christmas Fair because we already have a Christmas Market, but the concept has been so successful in other places that it would be a shame if a city as progressive as Galway did not have one.

Of course, what we have traditionally called ‘The Christmas Market’ in Galway, has been there for umpteen years. It has its own colour, attractions, vibrancy and that special atmosphere of the season which is difficult to define, but of which everyone has their own ideas as to the ingredients which must be present.

In Galway that unmissable part of the Christmas spirit is the market which takes place approximately from the front door of the Connacht Tribune right down to O’Brien’s Bridge, and stretches around St Nicholas Collegiate Church – the church itself is a wonderful heart for the season, and is the scene of a carols service which visitors have acclaimed worldwide.

The occasion of the service seems to bring out all that is best about the Christmas festivities. There is the invariable good humour, the greetings are many, effusive and genuine, the most dyed-in-the-wool old curmudgeons feel constrained to at least acknowledge the rest of humanity, and yet the hustle and bustle of the shopping seems to be left outside the doors.

If Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol established much of the backdrop and colour which became associated with ‘the typical Christmas’ in the minds of many, then, in Galway, the Christmas Market and St Nicholas Collegiate Church Carols Service, have encapsulated much of it for this writer.

In the minds of most of us, Christmas goes back to younger days, and undoubtedly in my case, part of that inescapable feeling of ‘Christmas’ has to be attributable to the fact that, as a very young cub reporter, it was my job to report on the Christmas Market.

Those days, everyone worked on a Saturday morning, and I remember year after year stepping outside in bitter cold, and heading into the magic world of the market. You had to step gingerly – for the footpaths were crowded with turkeys and geese as well as people!Then there was the meeting and greeting with the turkey and geese sellers, the lads flogging holly, and the tree vendors on O’Brien’s Bridge – all necessary so that you could return to the newsroom with the prices of everything, and a ‘colour piece’ for the following week’s Sentinel and Tribune.

It was unfortunate that snow very rarely obliged on the occasion, but, whatever about the ‘colour’ writing, the prices had to be correct.

Variations in the price per pound of turkeys and geese were watched in the local newspapers at the time like the sale of Government bonds on the business news these days! Many appeared to be less well-off in those days, but life was a great deal simpler and much less seemed to suffice.

Returning to the new Christmas Fair planned for Eyre Square this year, in my opinion, the arguments against are pretty easy to dispose of in any sensible discussion. The idea that it would in some way ‘take trade away’ from long-established business houses, is a strange one indeed . . . for, if one attempts to sustain that argument, then where do we go about the concept of events which simply draw-in people in the hope of doing business as a result?

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.