The Grand Stretch and Other Winter Musings

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We're nearly there; in a few short days we'll be at the shortest day of the year and Ireland's obsession with 'The Grand Stretch' will begin again. In our house growing up, the first announcement would happen sometime around now. My Dad would look up from his dinner and say 'you know, there'll be 15 minyits in the evenings by the 6th of January'. He pronounced minutes as if there was a spanish tilde over the n. It was one of the marks of his east Mayo accent and very much an essential part of the memory my siblings and I have of the announcement. We didn't really remark on it as kids but as adults we'd wait with bated breath for it to land and when it did it felt like Chistmas had finally arrived. If he seemed a bit slow to make the declaration we'd nudge proceedings along with little conversational prompts...'I was out walking the other morning and it was almost 9 before it was fully bright'....'you know, there'll be 15 minyits etc.....'. Did he know what we were at I wonder? Probably, but he still always came up with the goods when presented with his line. Even the grandkids waited for it wondering if Dandan had said his piece yet.

Dad was a farmer and he lived the seasons rather than observed them. There was nothing mystical about his relationship with the land, it was simply how he understood the world. The year to him was marked by the shortening or lengthening of the days as the seasons turned each year. Perhaps it was fitting that someone so tuned in to the turning of the year should have arrived at its very beginning. Our Dad, John Gunnigan, was born at ten minutes past midnight on the first of January 1932. A New Year baby he was the longed-for son after six daughters, set from birth to inherit the farm and to carry on our rare surname, a task he certainly did justice to, with five sons, ten grandsons and one greatgrandson the Gunnigan name seems safe for the future. His arrival must have felt like its own kind of promise to his parents, a new chapter opening with the calendar itself. Whether this shaped his awareness of time and seasons, I can't say. But there was always something in the way he marked the year that felt deeply instinctive and intuitive.

The solstice carries an understated quality in an Irish winter. There isn't really any big drama in the way the light returns (unless you're one of the lucky few to get a ticket to Newgrange on the morning of the solstice ).

It begins with a single minute gained, then another, changing imperceptively every day until one or two weeks into January a clear day will reveal its presence and we'll all start remarking on it. The day itself is like any other but it starts that slow, optimistic climb towards Spring. Life in rural Ireland creates a particular awareness of the year. Time isn't marked only by clocks and calendars. It's marked by the colour of the sky at midday or by the first frost on a gate hinge or the smell of earth when the temperature rises for the first time in spring. Dad's awareness wasn't a skill he learned. It was something he inherited from those before him. He felt it in the light on the road outside the house and in the sky over the fields. His comment each year about the fifteen minyits was less about precision and more about orientation. It was his way of saying that the world was beginning its swing back toward life.

When I consider it now, I realise that the exact number of minutes didn't actually matter. What mattered was the reassurance; we've done it, we've 'overed' another winter. The shortest day is behind us and better days are ahead. The land will begin to open itself again, the spring bulbs will appear and nature will come back to life. His 'fifteen minyits' were the opening notes of a song the entire country would soon be singing. He was just first out of the traps every year to alert us to its presence.

The world celebrates the new year on the first of January. It's a celebration filled with noise and intention and resolve. It's a turning of the calendar, not the season. We see news reports about fireworks in Sydney or the first babies born in Holles Street. The winter solstice offers a different kind of turning. It's not really a celebration at all but a shift or a quiet return. The awareness builds through January and before we know it, we're all sagely nodding at each other and comparing proof that the stretch is underway once more.

In some ways this is Ireland's true new year celebration, not the manufactured excitement of January 1st, but the organic joy that spreads when people begin to feel the light returning.

Dad's sense of the new year came not from a date but from daylight but he just felt it weeks before the rest of the country caught up. We laughed fondly about his devotion to that particular line and the predictability of it, but the first Christmas after he died it was one of the things I really missed. Now I hear myself repeating it each winter and I see my adult children fondly indulging my nostalgia. Dad might be gone but the the meaning and the reassurance of his words remains. It remains in the way I look at the sky on winter mornings and the way I notice the first stretch in the evening each January or when I search the winter sky at night to see the crumiscín (I think this is the constellation better known as the little dipper), that Irish name we've always known it as must be pecuiliar to the part of east Mayo we grew up in because I've never heard anyone else use that name for it. Dad had a particular fondness for the crumiscín and as children he would point it out to us. He would often stand outside on a frosty night and point out the different constellations to me, it's a particularly fond memory I have of him and since he died I find myself doing the same and sending love to him when I locate our old friend the crumiscín.

This week, in the chaos of Christmas preparations, I'm feeling nostalgic for the Christmasses of my Mayo childhood. I can picture Mam at the kitchen table, washing the figures from the crib, it was a top job to help with and we used to fight over who got to wash Baby Jesus. There's some gorgeous photos of various grandchildren doing that job over the years. When we cleared out the old house I brought the crib back home with me and now it has pride of place on the hall table in my house in Naas. I think of Dad and his fifteen minyits, if I close my eyes I can almost hear it as clearly as if I was sat at the table in Lurgan with him and Mam, enjoying a cup of tea and a jaffa cake after the dinner "do you know, there'll be fifteen minyits in the evening by the sixth of January."

As I've got older it feels important to hang on to these connections with my past so now I find myself making the same announcement each winter. My pronunciation is different, flattened by time and geography, but the instinct remains unchanged and when I hear myself say it, I hear him too. The ritual has found new life in our siblings' group chat, where around this time each year, someone will inevitably post Dad's line. It appears without preamble or explanation. Just those words, sometimes with the Mayo pronunciation attempted in text, sometimes simply quoted straight and when it does, the responses come quickly; a heart or a laughing emoji or a comment. We're scattered now, but the announcement still gathers us and it feels as if the year still turns for all of us at once. It's a small sentence but it carries the weight of a lifetime spent paying attention. It's also a reminder that wars, or pandemics, or crazy world leaders might come and go but every year without fail, once we pass the shortest day of the year there's fifteen minyits in the evenings by the 6th of January. There's something beautiful and reassuring in that.

Go mbeirimid beo ar an am seo arís.

Marianne Gunnigan December 2025