The Christmas Turkey

(Paddy Heneghan writes here about a visit during Christmas holidays in the 1940s to The Square in Tralee where his grandmother bought her turkeys for the Christmas period.  The Square in Tralee is first mentioned in records back in 1613.  The area was low lying and a marsh developed where, hard to believe now, turf was once harvested.  The houses were built on higher ground giving The Square its present shape. It later became a market place and cattle fairs were held there. There was also a thriving fish market.)

The Christmas Turkey

In former days one of the adventures of the Christmas holidays in Tralee was to help Grandmother Foley of Moyderwell when she visited the Market to buy some of the provisions for the festive period.
A good Christmas turkey was an essential item on the shopping list.  These were the days before turkeys were bought fully eviscerated, ready to cook. Prior even before they were sold “New York Dressed”, that is, with the head, feet, and viscera still intact. Grandmother’s turkeys, however, were bought alive and kicking!

Grandmother usually bought three or four of these birds. They could be bought live from the dealers, mainly country folk, who brought their produce to the town market. One in particular of the turkeys was bought for the Moyderwell Christmas dinner and had to be of the highest quality.  Grandmother chose it after careful scrutiny. She poked her finger all over the bird.  A good meaty breast was essential!  This turkey was usually a 16-pounder, as there were rarely fewer than a dozen present for the dinner.


The other turkeys were selected for later important festive occasions.  There was one for the New Year’s Day dinner, and one for the dinner of 6th January (Little or Women’s Christmas as it was referred to locally, or in ecclesiastical terms The Feast of the Epiphany).  In between these dates there was the turkey which would be the prize for the annual post-Christmas card-fest in Grandmother’s kitchen.  There the card-game of Thirty-One was played out in five rubbers, by the most murderous group of card-players in town.  Three of the Foley sisters took part, as well as Grandmother herself who was ordinarily most well-spoken, but in the course of card-play she permitted herself some unbelievable blood-curdling imprecations on those who crossed her.  The kids of course were confined to the parlour while the card-games were in progress.
The turkeys were kept live in the stable at the rear of the Foley house in Moyderwell.  There were regular specialists resident at home who could be charged with the various preparatory tasks before the turkeys reached the table.



Two of the family were involved in keeping the turkeys alive over the twelve days of Christmas.  Aunt Chriss prepared the rations for the birds, but Grandmother Foley herself fed them daily.  The food for the turkeys comprised the left-overs from the family meals, which included various vegetables, especially potatoes.  Aunt Chriss would make sure that plenty of ‘spuds’ were included with the turkeys in mind, to consume the leavings.

Grandmother herself daily fed the turkeys, one by one, by placing each bird on her lap and force-feeding it by a process known technically as gavaging (a word, I should explain, that was not one commonly in use in the patois of Tralee).  Gavaging involved stuffing balls of food down the turkey’s throats.  I doubt whether Grandmother knew that this method was developed by the ancient Egyptians, or that it was, up to modern times, used by the French makers of foie gras (fat liver mousse) when they required their fowl to grow fat in the liver. The French, I believe, used tubes to introduce the food into their birds.  Grandmother Foley simply used the ‘Foley-no-frills method’ by grasping the turkey by the beak, stuffing in the potato balls and holding the bird’s neck until it was forced to ingest the food.  (Do not try this at home – it is now outlawed in most civilized countries.)

Two other members of the family next became involved - my mother and cousin Teddy (Timothy Christopher) who was Aunt Chriss’s son.

My mother’s revulsion at the sight of blood was legendary, and accordingly I could never understand how someone as squeamish as she was could tackle the killing of turkeys.  Her method was thus: She would get one of the family to tie the turkey’s legs together and hold the bird tightly and firmly, laying its neck along a flat wooden surface, an old bread-board being ideal for the job.  Armed then with a well-sharpened knife and putting her hand over the bird’s eyes, my mother would firmly and slowly cut through the turkey’s neck.  After the birds’s death-tremors ceased, it would be hung up from the ceiling on a meat-hook to allow the blood to be collected in a bowl.

We once has a lodger who was horrified when he heard that my mother was going to kill a turkey in the manner above described, and begged to be allowed to do the job himself in his own way, which was by twisting its neck.  We foolishly allowed him the courtesy of trying out his method, later bringing the kitchen back to a reasonable state of tidiness when the broken delph from the dresser had been swept up and the curtains had been replaced in the kitchen window.  The turkey had objected strenuously to having its neck wrung and had outmuscled the lodger, breaking loose and flying bonkers around the room.  The bird had to be returned to the stable to await my mother’s ministrations at a later time, when it had recovered its composure.  The lodger had to be revived with a shot of Grandmother’s (for emergencies only) brandy.

Timothy Christopher was the next to be called to step up to the plate. He was an expert at plucking the now dead turkeys.  The process was started by the carcass being immersed in a basin and doused with plenty of boiling water. This loosens the base of the feathers and, provided that the dousing had been thoroughly done, the feathers came away very easily.  I joined Teddy on one occasion to see him at work and maybe lend a hand.  At the time Teddy was in rather a hurry to get out to join his friends down town.  He assured me that he would have the job done in a matter of minutes.  Work in haste and repent at leisure, as the proverb goes.  The boiling water appears not to have reached all parts of the bird, for in the ensuing process a goodly portion of the turkey came away in Teddy’s hand with one bunch of the feathers. The problem then was, how to ensure that the lump of turkey could be reattached to the carcass without its being too noticeable?  A bigger problem was: what would Grandmother say when the turkey came to the Christmas dinner in a partially dismembered state?  Panic had ensued one previous Christmas when the plum pudding was dropped on the floor by the aunts and split in two, an incident miraculously concealed from Grandmother’s notice by a stratagem never revealed to us younger fry.  We did however come up with a plan for the sundered turkey. We dipped the dismembered portion of turkey in melted dripping, which when it cooled proved to be an adequate though temporary adhesive.  The aunts luckily did not notice the filled in cavity in the bird during the cooking on Christmas Day.  Indeed, Grandmother was heard to observe that the bird was so tender that the meat was literally falling off the bones.  She never realized how true that remark was!