On this day in 1988, The Irish Times was carrying the usual seasonal interviews with people who had come home for Christmas. One of them, the actor Jeananne Crowley, said: “I’m listening to Gay Byrne talking to other emigrants who sadly won’t be home for Christmas – people away in Germany, in Japan – and I’m nearly in tears.”

What she had been listening to was one of the distinctive rituals of the Irish Christmas: the Gay Byrne radio show’s Christmas phone call. It was as much of a seasonal ceremony as carols or midnight Mass. And to remember it is to remember how profound the sense of separation used to be.

For many Irish families, phone calls to faraway places like the United States or Australia or even to European countries were just too expensive. Even for those who could afford it, making a call was an awkward business. In 1981, for example, one hotelier in Mayo wrote to the then minister for tourism John Kelly asking him to “try to imagine the problems of inserting 38 five pence pieces into a slot to make a three-minute phone call to the Continent”. He also pointed out that with just 10 lines linking Westport to the capital, it was often hard even to get a connection to Dublin.

But for a lot of Irish households, a three-minute call to a remote family member, even if it could be arranged (lines had to be booked in advance at Christmas) was simply beyond their means. There was thus a gulf, not just of distance but of silence. Letters home filled........

© The Irish Times