If only there was peace on earth for Christmas

The kids’ Christmas wishes this year are an eclectic mix. There’s a request for a tablet (electronic, not medicinal I hasten to add), a bike and from our youngest, ‘lots of torches and Peppa Pig stuff’. He was quite taken by torches called to action during Storm Darragh and now either feels like they are great toys or essential pieces of kit for living on a windswept island off the west coast of Ireland where the propensity for power cuts is significant.

Each of the three kids has five or six items on their list and we’re not sure Santa will be able to provide everything on the list. Certainly, the adults wouldn’t be keen on a tablet just yet so we will have to see if Santa literally comes up with the goods or not.

But as we were helping them to write their letters, it got me thinking what would I put on a wishlist?

Not for myself (how long do you have?) but for the world our kids are growing up in locally, nationally and internationally. And would Santa be able to oblige?

When you become a parent, you look at the future differently. It is not just a world you are going to grow old in but one in which your kids will grow up, mature and have kids of their own. You have more skin in the game – you are no longer concerned with just your lifetime.

We’re blessed that our kids grow up on Achill Island, a beautiful and peaceful place with a strong sense of community. But emigration is a way of life here.

Something that has always resonated with me was an Achill father telling me a decade ago about his teenage son. He spoke of how those were the important years to spend with him because, in all likelihood, once his son went to college, that was the end of him living in Achill.

Sure, he might be home at holidays, Christmas, etc, but the pattern of life in Achill is most of its young have to go elsewhere for work. Not everyone but more than should be the case compared with not just other parts of the country but other parts of this county. The father was acutely aware of this and made the most of the teenage years.

Where will our kids create lives for themselves? Will they be able to work in Achill? Will they want to?

I’d be a big believer in travelling the world, broadening your mind and going where you wish to. But the reality is that while many from Achill choose to depart and prefer urban living or are simply drawn to other countries and cultures, many more would love to live here but cannot. The work simply isn’t there.

Many Achill people work away from the island but raise their families here, willing to travel great distances for work so that Achill can be home in every sense. It shows the ties to home.

It really is a great pity how under-utilised and under-supported rural communities like Achill are in modern Ireland.

It would be great if the next Irish government could see regions like Connacht and the three Ulster counties in the Republic (which comprise the area of the Northern and Western Regional Assembly) as a potential solution and not a strain on resources.

Dublin is top-heavy, other cities are heaving, including Galway, while great expanses of rural Ireland are struggling because of the lack of sufficient infrastructure, investment and jobs. Balanced regional development can add both the west and east coasts.

It would be great if we didn’t have to cling to the teenage years with our kids, getting ready for them to depart Achill like generations before.

I am not sure what Santa could do about that. We will have to have a word.

Immigration into this country is symptomatic of people from other countries seeking better lives for themselves, their own place not able to sustain them. It is a mirror image of our own history. So we must always have perspective that while our problems in the west, as one of the struggling regions in the European Union, is the very definition of a first-world problem. Millions of people the world over would snap your hand off for such complaints.

At Christmas, in particular, we should be acutely aware of kindness to all of humanity but it should not be a fleeting moment.

I’ve seen how our kids are not born with perceptions of any differences between race and colour; it is a learned behaviour. I hope they and their generation grow up in a more tolerant world than that we find ourselves in currently, one where decency and goodwill to your fellow man and woman seems to be in shorter supply.

And if we are looking for perspective this Christmas, we only need to go to the Middle East for it. How will our children’s generation look back at what has been happening in Palestine since the latest and most devastating wars with Israel broke out?

The horror being visited on, primarily, innocent civilians in Palestine is abhorrent. Accusations have been made of genocide against the Israelis. They are, in this writer’s view, well-founded. The United Nations has acknowledged as much.

What is most puzzling is the indifference in so many quarters to what is going on. Are we all so consumed by our own lives that we turn a blind eye? Have we become more self-centred since Covid?

Whatever the cause, there is no doubt that we are witnessing a war that, bad as it is in of itself, could throw open the door to further conflicts around the world. True leadership among global leaders appears to be in short supply.

Any parent cannot but recoil when they see some of the images of murdered and maimed children brought to our screens from Gaza.

If only peace on earth was something that we could all wish for.