求escaping to ireland for christmas 原文

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求escaping to ireland for christmas 原文
1个回答 分类:英语 2014-10-28

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Escaping to Ireland for Christmas
TO escape the commercial and familial hoopla of the holidays,my husband and I like to take our children to faraway places for a different kind of celebration - one that we create from the bits of experience and tradition we value most.Traveling at Christmas is part of our general inclination to set out against the seasonal tides.We go north in the winter (but not to ski),south in the summer; we stay home to work on weekends and slip out of town on a Tuesday; and when it begins to pour,we don layers of raingear and head for the most mist-enshrouded beaches or for forest trails,glowing with colors the rain unfurls.
I confess that avoiding gridlock and extortionate rates are the real motives behind this behavior,but our contrariness stems not so much from what we don't find at the end of these odd journeys as from what we do find:Mont-St.-Michel sparkling and deserted under steely January skies; a spontaneous candlelit dinner with the owners at a snowbound Vermont inn one winter weekday; two turns on any ride and a front-row spot for the Christmas parade at Disney World the week after Thanksgiving; the elegant gardens at Sissinghurst in England,tangled and fading on an autumn afternoon; the beach all to ourselves and some great blue herons during the hot lulls between thunderstorms on Captiva Island in September.
The ingenuity to make such arrangements,the stamina to endure them,and the sense of humor to fend off the inevitable skepticism - ''Ireland in December?'' - are learned through long and difficult experience.Caught in the middle of a fierce gale on the Atlantic Drive of Ireland's Achill Island,I needed all of my imaginative powers to grasp the positive qualities of the experience; an hour later,sipping whisky-laced coffee by the fire at a guesthouse willing to open especially for us,I knew we had done the right thing.
Our children are not always little troupers about plans that disturb familiar patterns or require that they wear heavy clothing.Our recent fascination with wintering in Ireland - especially at Christmastime - has even their backing,however.The fashioning of our own portable traditions and the delight of discovering another culture together enable us to recast our image of Christmas,a process that began even on the flight from Atlanta to Shannon one year.The plane was full not with tourists but with merrymaking Irish emigrants celebrating their chance to return home for the holidays.Their festive mood was infectious.Throughout our visit,we saw such revelry bubbling up wherever friends or relatives,young and old,happened to meet,but especially in pubs,which even in the most remote western villages overflowed with music,conversation and noisy crowds well into the New Year.Popular songs on the radio and every Irish newspaper told the other side of this story:emigration,on the rise again in recent years,has been Ireland's national sorrow for a century or more.
In restaurants,shops and everywhere we went,we were celebrities because we had come not to visit relatives or trace our heritage but simply to be in Ireland during the holidays.At the butcher's counter in a crowded supermarket on Christmas Eve,my Chicago accent stirred friendly curiosity among some customers as I joked about our being the only Americans in Mayo.In fact,we roamed the narrow,twisting roads all through Mayo,Galway,Clare,Kerry and Tipperary and visited such normally bustling attractions as the Rock of Cashel,Bunratty Castle,the Cliffs of Moher and Muckross House in Killarney without seeing any other Americans or any tourists at all,except a few Dubliners fleeing city life.
Another time,over a foamy glass of Guinness by the fragrant turf fire at the Olde Railway (a family-run hotel in Westport where we begin all our Irish journeys),I found myself explaining to the bartender how the pace of life in American cities leaves working parents and children too little time to be together.United in being strangers when we travel and bent on absorbing every subtlety of our new surroundings,we learn to appreciate more fully each other's insights.In Ireland soccer cards replace baseball cards,coins can be distinguished by animal (bird,horse,bull,fish),and for long periods of the day there is literally nothing on television - these are only some of the cultural observations our children reported,as each evening we would put together the day's puzzle of ''samenesses'' and ''differences.''
AS we travel,we create together the themes and jokes that shape the trip and that weave together our memories.On one trip,for example,the whole family conspired in satisfying my mania for knitting wool,whether that meant stopping to watch sheep scuttle stiff-legged across the road,exploring an abandoned wool mill still alive with the music of its great water wheel,zeroing in on the yarn store in every town,or deciding together on colors for future sweaters that we renamed to remind us of places we'd been - like Clew Bay Blue (somewhere between teal and aqua) or Connemara Hills (a smoky purple-blue).
We take traditions along with us at Christmas and relish choosing among them.Our celebration depends on a Christmas tree - though it may be a mere branch stuck in a bucket of rocks,propped up in the corner of a rented cottage.A few favorite ornaments fit easily in a suitcase corner.The stockings we brought from home and hung by the turf fire trapped its heathery smell for weeks.
The buying of presents - we ruled that everything within our budget had to be made in Ireland - gave purpose to forays into Mayo's market towns:Westport,Newport,Castlebar and Ballina.These visits combined sightseeing with shopping and always began about 4 P.M.,when Christmas lights glowed along the winding streets and river banks,and the sudden darkness of early winter brought us in from the countryside we never tired of exploring,even in the rain.
Suitcases are natural limits for gift-giving,and the overlapping of Christmas presents with souvenirs inspired us to make careful selections.New rubber rain boots and thick wool socks gave us a sense of invulnerability as we tramped through muddy fields to explore a megalithic tomb or strolled a beach at low tide,the stark white sand a brilliant swatch against stormy seas and dark hills.Toy cars with right-hand drive,comic books Irish-style,pocketable books about Irish birds and place names,a whole smoked salmon from nearby waters,and an array of fine whiskys gave tangible shape and local color to longstanding passions.
Shopping for holiday meals to pack into an under-the-counter refrigerator became a challenge when we realized that in Ireland,shops,banks and offices close at Christmas for three days.Some restaurants and most bars open again on the 26th,or St.Stephen's Day.
Winter is the steeplechase season,and televised races become the focus of those quiet,lazy days after Christmas:attending a meet at Thurles to witness the ancient rituals of betting brought this national sport to life for us.Even looking at the world through local newspapers yielded a special insight into Irish life,as writers grew reflective about the year just past and prospects for their country's future.
It is easier to be reflective and to savor such small moments when one is far from home,and the winter weather and short days can shape rather than limit the experience.At home this year,we'll be dreaming up another holiday trip,as we plunge into the round of seasonal activities with enthusiasm renewed by memories of Christmas in Ireland:the drive through those smoky purple-blue Connemara hills on Christmas Day when ours was the only car on the road; jamming a turkey into the cottage's tiny oven and burning the only cranberries in Ireland; a country and Western singalong with the holiday crowd at McNamara's Bar,the yellow gorse blooming on shadowy hillsides in a January storm.
 
 
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