My mother [Philomena Begley] had a song years ago called Dear Santa and it was the first song I learned to play back when I was 10 or 11. I used to perform it with her on stage. That’s one of my earliest musical memories. There are no Christmas songs that I hate. Christmas is Christmas and you have to take it for what it is, it’s the best time of the year.
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Performing Fairytale of New York used to be fantastic, but, unfortunately, poor Mammy had a bad experience with the song on The Late Late Show. You can never go wrong with Seven Drunken Nights during a concert.
I was in the choir growing up and we always performed at “Midnight mass” at 9pm in the local church. We all went to the pub afterwards. These days, once the Christmas parties kick off, that’s when the season begins for me.
My mum is out performing, I’m out performing and my wife is a hairdresser, so she’s very busy in December. Throughout that month we all get to see people really enjoying themselves.
Our entire family always goes to my mother’s house for Christmas Day. My two sisters and their husbands and all the grandchildren will be there. We do the usual Christmas dinner, we open our presents, crack open the wine and sing a few songs. We do all of that, fall out and go to bed [jokes]! It’s a typical Irish Christmas Day. Christmas Day is a real day of settling down after a busy month of gigs and before the hectic week between Christmas and New Years.
Some of the neighbours would call over for a sing song. It’s generally an old school celebration, and there could even be some hymns sung on the day. When my father gets going, he could take off singing in Latin.
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