After a lengthy correspondence and a flurry of cables, Santa Claus has agreed to visit Ballybunion at precisely 19-30 hours tomorrow. As befits this saintly and philanthropic gentleman, he will be greeted by a torchlight procession and escorted by the Local Pipe Band to the Square. There at the foot of a huge illuminated Christmas tree he will be received officially. As he has a long night ahead of him, and some pretty urgent business on hand, the ladies of Muintir na Tire have arrived to help him in distributing his gifts. I am told if everything goes according to plan, there should be in Ballybunion tomorrow such an atmosphere of Christmas as there has never been before.

But Santa Claus has more work for his reindeer to do and they will have to put their best foot forward for he is due in Cavan town this very afternoon. On the tennis court beside Cavan Town Hall, there stands a 35 foot high gaily decorated Christmas tree. Since Wednesday, the tree has been floodlit and its own lights glow happily as Christmas carols are played there every evening. But this afternoon the tree comes into its own. The Cavan ITGWU Band will parade the town and will meet Santa Claus, who will arrive on a sleigh drawn by a piebald richly caparisoned. (Santa Claus uses reindeer only in snowy countries and when he is airborne. )

Dublin Courier 23-27 December 1766

ON the 13th instant, Richard Langford otherwise Baker, of Killilah in the County of Limerick, was most barbarously murdered by Owen Morisy, who entered his house, and without any provocation, in a treacherous manner, struck him with a blackthorn stake, as he slept in his chair by the fire, which injured his skull and he died in less than two hours after. . . Several shops were all this day kept open, to the great offence of those who wish to see a due respect paid to so distinguished a festival. . . As a gentleman was passing through the lane leading from Ballybough-bridge to Drumcondra Road, he received several shots in his face and neck, from a gun that was carelessly fired by a young man on the other side of the hedge. This practice of fowling in the environs of the city is now grown a dangerous nuisance, and calls loudly for redress.

Sport 24 December 1880 Wheat and Chaff - This is a fact. At the Gaiety the other evening Edward Hanlan, the champion sculler, was present, and was overheard by a young gentleman from the provinces to say that he never had nicer sculls for handling than those lent to him at the University by Mr Labat. "Ah sure, " said the provincial, when he was subsequently informed of Hanlan's great feats, "I thought he was a medical student". . .

Our office-boy has not a little interfered with the getting out of this paper by his hourly bulletins to the editorial sanctum on the publication of the Christmas number of the Weekly Freeman. Our back windows look out upon the machine-room of the "mighty weekly", and we found it difficult to keep the OB from jambing his nose against those windowpanes. He would come every second hour or so and inform us that ten more miles of paper had gone on the Howe-machine; but when he came and told us that the machine was running so rapidly that it cut off the foreman's little finger we had to pull down our back window blinds, and send the OB to worry the floor with the sweeping brush.