So This Is Christmas review – most wonderful time of the year in a small Irish town

A modest film with modest ambitions, this is a documentary that paints a portrait of a small Irish town at Christmas, through interviews with various inhabitants about their lives, touching on what the festive season means to them. There’s a single mum of three, now sober, who used to have a drinking problem. There’s a young widower contemplating his first Christmas with his two sons and without his beloved late wife. There’s a cheery older gentleman working on his reading skills, and an older lady who remembers the time when their small community was ruled by a handful of male authority figures in positions of power.

These people’s stories are all gently compelling, in much the same way as they would be if you got into a conversation with any of them on the bus or in a bar. The uniting principle of the documentary is that they’re all part of the same town at Christmas, which is a fairly light-touch framework; this isn’t a portrait with a complicated thesis about its subject, the vibe is strictly observational. And yet beneath that impression of fly-on-the-wall nonchalance there is a sense of a hidden guiding hand, sketching out a particular image of Ireland’s rural inhabitants: wryly stoical, encountering terrible life events and general hardships with good humour and admirable pluck. This is, then, a selective portrayal, focusing on a particular character type, and juxtaposing that set of people with the so-called most wonderful time of the year.

This is a non-fiction film, but one drawing on a tradition of informing fiction such as A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life, in which the viewer’s empathy for the poor and/or deserving and their struggles is given an additional prod by the festive backdrop. In the case of the personable people interviewed here, that festive twist is hardly needed.