Forgotten 6 January events and the Epiphany (Jan. 6) setting of Joyce's "The Dead"

What is it about?

Gabriel Conroy initially seems unaware of the elided remembrances that haunt the Epiphany festivities of “The Dead.” In parallel to the Western Christian liturgical calendar that celebrated January 6 as the Epiphany, an alternate folk calendar observed it as “Women’s Christmas," the one day on which women took a break from the season’s household chores and ate together. January 6 was also the anniversary of the worst storm in Irish recorded history, the Night of the Big Wind (Oíche na Gaoithe Móire), an 1839 catastrophe in which the meteorologically rare event of snow falling all over Ireland was just the beginning of the horrific weather. In retrospect, the deadly storm was popularly recollected to have been a harbinger of the Great Famine of 1845, and many survivors thought the Day of Judgement had arrived. Certainly, it appears to have been the first day of the End of Days for the Irish language and Gaelic culture the Famine swept away. The implicit invocation of the Famine in “The Dead” − via that catastrophe’s association with another freak weather event on a previous January 6 − adds a frisson to the party’s over-abundance of food. Additionally, Gabriel’s lack of deep appreciation for his aunts’ hard work on what would have been their day of rest in an earlier Ireland comes strongly into view once the date’s traditional significance for women is acknowledged. At the close, the forgotten trauma and commemorations of women and the rural poor return to haunt both Gabriel and the official calendar. “The Dead” evokes such memories on the anniversary of what the folk record assessed to have been the real beginning of the Famine and its accompanying cultural holocaust, which is the Night of the Big Wind on Women’s Christmas in 1839.

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Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Having grown up in the Irish West, I was aware of two unofficial/local memories associated with the date of the Epiphany, the Women’s Christmas celebration and the Night of the Big Wind, forgotten remembrances that are conjured up by the bad weather and party of “The Dead.” This hurricane-like storm arrived without warning on 6 January 1839. Thousands abandoned suddenly roofless houses, and the country experienced flash floods and showers of salt water driven miles inland by the raging sea. Estimates suggest deaths in the hundreds and a loss of 250,000 trees, while Dublin’s Liffey flooded the quays in the wider spectacle of what the Dublin Evening Mail called a “sacked city.” In retrospect, the deadly storm was recollected by the rural poor– for whom it had long-lasting economic effects– as a harbinger of the 1845 Famine, with succeeding weather events evoking memories of the seemingly related mass traumas of ruination and hunger. In the millenarian atmosphere of colonial Ireland, many thought the Day of Judgement had arrived, and it does seem to have been the first day of the End of Days for the Irish language and rural culture, which the Famine decimated. “The Dead” evokes such memories on the anniversary of what the folk record assessed to have been the real beginning of the Famine and its accompanying cultural and linguistic holocaust, which is the Night of the Big Wind on Women’s Christmas in 1839. The storm reemerged in public/print discussion briefly in the decade Joyce wrote “The Dead”: when the state pension was introduced in 1909, applicants lacking documentation of birth were asked whether they could remember the storm of 1839, exactly seventy years previously.

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