Summary
Christmas approaches in the third chapter. An attractive Norway spruce (a member of the pine tree family) and a well-kept nativity scene adorn the central square. Despite facing economic hardship, some townspeople ensure that the figures are freshly painted each year. Some people disapprove of how colorful Joseph's red and purple robes are, but they approve of the Virgin Mary figure and the brown donkey. The Virgin Mary "[kneels] passively in her usual blue and white." The townspeople elect to wait until Christmas Eve to place the figure of the infant Jesus in the manger.
The custom in New Ross is for everyone to gather on the evening of the first Sunday in December outside the Town Hall to watch the lights come on. This community tradition also includes music: a pipe band and carol singers. On the first Sunday in December 1985, the dry and bitter cold prompts Eileen to ensure that her daughters wear hooded, lined, and waterproof jackets and gloves. Mrs. Kehoe (who owns the local diner) sets up a stall selling gingerbread and hot chocolate. Joan (the second-eldest Furlong daughter) gets ready for the performance with the choir members. The nuns supervise the scene and speak only to "the more well-off parents."
To move around and keep warm, the rest of the Furlong family walks about the side streets before stopping in the doorway of a clothing store. Eileen admires a pair of navy shoes and a matching handbag and chats with some neighbors who also ventured out to enjoy the event. Eventually, someone makes an announcement on the loudspeaker to come gather in the square. The councillor exits a Mercedes in his fancy clothes and gives a short speech before the lights come on. The effect of the multi-colored light on the street has a magical quality, and the crowd softly applauds as the band begins to play. A man dressed as Santa Claus enters, and Furlong's youngest daughter Loretta begins to cry. Furlong gently comforts her but worries that she is not resilient enough to stand the world's hardships.
Upon arriving home, Eileen announces that it is time they make a Christmas cake. It is an entire family affair: Eileen gets out the recipe and preps ingredients, Furlong creams a pound of butter and sugar and later sets up the coal oven, and the girls grate lemon rind and prepare the nuts and fruit that will go in the cake. With everything ready, Eileen transfers the cake mixture into the tin and laughs as she places it in the oven. Quickly, she tells the girls to go write their letters to Santa so she can work on the ironing. Furlong notes how they always move mechanically from task to task without any space for reflection. He wonders whether life would carry on the same way if they had more time for reflection, or if they would "just lose the run of themselves." He had not been present while creaming the butter and sugar, instead focusing on the worries that tomorrow would bring. Furlong acknowledges the never-ending cycle of his worries.
The sight of Eileen ironing clothes while the girls sit down to write their letters prompts an unhappy memory in Furlong. During one Christmas from his boyhood, he wrote a letter to Santa asking for his father or at least for a puzzle. Instead, he received a nailbrush and bar of soap, a hot water bottle, and an old musty copy of A Christmas Carol. Out in the cow-house, he privately cried and figured that his mother's poverty and his father's absence were the reasons that kids called him names at school. Before returning inside, he washed his face in the horse trough and held his hands in the icy cold to "divert his pain."
Furlong continues to question where his father is in the novella's present. He catches himself examining older men to look for a physical resemblance and listens for clues as to his father's identity in the things that people say. Some part of him believes that there must be someone who knows who his father is. Shortly after he married Eileen, Furlong considered asking Mrs. Wilson about his father, but he balked at the possibility of offending her. A year later, Mrs. Wilson had a stroke and lost the use of her left side and her ability to speak. In her hospital bed, she resembled a child as she gazed out the window in her button-up flowery nightgown.
Sheila interrupts Furlong's reveries and uncannily asks whether Santa ever visited him. This leads Furlong to remark that while women fear men for their physical strength and social powers, women have a much deeper intuition and are able to sense things before they occur. There were times in his marriage when he almost feared Eileen and envied her spirited ability to cope with life. To Sheila, Furlong replies that Santa once brought him a farm jigsaw. She asks if that was all with a degree of incredulity. Furlong swallows and tells her to finish her letter. Eileen goes over the content of the letters (telling them what is enough and what is too much to ask for) while Furlong examines the spelling. Grace questions the validity of the address they put on the letters, and the girls discuss how Santa will receive the letters in time.
Eileen continues her ironing, moving from the more difficult shirts and blouses to the pillowcases. The girls stay up late despite it being a school night. They drink Ribena and eat soda bread with Marmite or lemon curd. Furlong burns his toast but eats it anyway, feeling emotional without fully understanding why. After going down memory lane for a while, Furlong reasons that things happen and pass in their own time. He appreciates the chance to think back on his past (despite it upsetting him somewhat) instead of worrying about future troubles that may or may not occur.
At eleven p.m., Furlong and Eileen send the girls to bed. As Furlong waits for the kettle to boil, he thinks about how, despite his initial disappointment, he'd been consistently comforted by the hot water bottle Ned had gifted him for Christmas. And after reading A Christmas Carol (gifted by Mrs. Wilson) and looking up new words in the dictionary, he won first prize for spelling at school. Mrs. Wilson praised his efforts, and he enjoyed a sense of accomplishment and belonging.
Eileen fills two glasses of Bristol Cream. Furlong tells her that she works too hard, and she points out that he does too. They read the girls' letters, and Eileen says that they must be raising their daughters right since the writing shows manners. Furlong tells her it's mostly her doing since he spends so much time out working, but she replies that their lack of debt is down to him. They decide what to gift their daughters (and each other) for Christmas, and Eileen burns the letters. Furlong says that time will pass before they know it, and the girls will be married with families of their own.
Eileen asks her husband if something is bothering him because she noticed that he was in his head all night. He tells her he was remembering times from his childhood in the Wilson household, and asks whether she ever worries about things. She says that she dreamed about having to pull Kathleen's tooth, and that she worries about their family's expenses. Furlong asks her whether she thinks the girls are alright, especially Loretta who did not want to see Santa Claus that night. Eileen tells Furlong to give the girl time to grow into herself. But he restates the question, not quite sure what he is asking. Eileen can only respond in terms of their financial situation.
Furlong expresses weariness at the drudgery and hardship of his daily routine: getting up at dark to work the whole day and then arriving again in the dark. He wonders what (if anything) else matters apart from his family. At nearly forty years old, he wonders what his life is about. Another memory surfaces, this time of a summer job he'd once had at a mushroom factory. The work was difficult, repetitive, and seemingly endless.
Eileen shares the town gossip she'd heard that night, and Furlong wonders if she ever feels disappointed in their relationship. After the conversation ends, they sit and read the newspaper and lightly doze until three a.m. when the cake is ready.
Analysis
The public display of turning on the Christmas lights is an important annual tradition in the town. Christmas is a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Despite the fact that Jesus preached the merits of love, compassion, forgiveness, and service, the nuns who facilitate the night's musical performance walk around and speak only to the "well-off parents." In other words, they ironically do not practice what they preach. Like the town's religious order, the councillor also values wealth. He shows up at the event wearing an expensive coat and driving a Mercedes. One's economic status clearly plays an important role in this town.
Furlong demonstrates a great deal of care and worry as a father when his youngest daughter Loretta cries at the sight of a man dressed as Santa Claus. He fears that she will be unequipped to handle difficulties in life, but he only expresses love, compassion, and comfort in response to her crying. It "[cuts] him" to witness his daughter so afraid of what other children crave. This shows that Furlong breaks gender stereotypes about men being unable to show emotions, particularly those associated with love and care. When Furlong shares his worries later on with Eileen, she advises him to give Loretta time to grow into herself. In this way, Eileen is the more pragmatic of the two.
Furlong continues to reveal his anxieties as the night progresses. Rather than worrying about the future and the family's finances (which is his modus operandi), he loses himself in memories of the past. This gives a sense of how Furlong came to be who he is. For example, his complicated reflections on the simple Christmas presents he once received from Mrs. Wilson and Ned show that he did not become bitter at life's disappointments. Rather, Furlong is capable of making the best of a situation. When he initially received the gifts (a book and a hot water bottle), he stuck his hands in icy water to "divert his pain." But rather than emotionally numbing out to deal with reality, he came to find value in these gifts. The bottle brought a great deal of comfort, and his reading efforts led him to win the top prize at school for spelling. Thus the care he received as a child translated into him being an empathetic adult.
Keegan continues to evoke a strong sense of place by using colloquial language particular to Ireland. For example, Furlong calls his daughter "a leanbh," which is Irish for "my child." The food items mentioned in this chapter also root the story in an Irish setting. These foods include a Christmas cake made with nuts and candied fruit, soda bread with marmite and lemon curd, and Ribena (a blackcurrant-based soft drink).
The image of the wind tearing the blossoms off cherry trees outside Mrs. Wilson's hospital window parallels the novella's opening image of wind stripping the yellow trees bare. Whether in April or November, the wind has a powerful presence. Despite the different seasons and chronologies, both these images portray nature as a force capable of creating beauty (in the form of colorful leaves and blossoms) as well as destroying it.
Furlong wonders if he is becoming sentimental due to his nostalgic ruminations. This deepens into the question of what his life is for in the lines "Lately, he had begun to wonder what mattered, apart from Eileen and the girls. He was touching forty but didn’t feel himself to be getting anywhere or making any kind of headway and could not but sometimes wonder what the days were for." These lines suggest that Furlong is having a midlife crisis: a common experience in which a middle-aged person will undergo a period of self-reflection and identity transition. Unlike his more spirited and practical wife, Furlong is prone to these types of anxieties.
