The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays — Story, Setting & Ideas

Costume as Character

Hare devotes entire sections of his notes to describing what each character wears, and these descriptions often do more to define personality than the dialogue does. In Where the Mulligans Live, Mrs. Mulligan appears in a "well worn, old-fashioned cloth waist" with sleeves rolled up, a skirt of contrasting color turned up to show a flannel petticoat, and an apron "of ample proportions, but without bib." The boys Matsy and Patsy wear "long, tattered trousers, old suspenders, calico shirts, torn and patched." These are not generic poor people; they are carefully assembled visual types. The notes also specify that in Act III, Matsy dons a large black mustache and a coat much too large, while Patsy wears a dwarf's tunic with yellow makeup and rouge—a sudden shift into grotesque comedy that undercuts the play's sentimental ending. Hare treats costume as a flexible tool for both realism and farce, and the contrast between the shabby domestic setting and the exaggerated disguises creates a deliberate tonal wobble.

Dialect and the Sound of Poverty

Hare writes Irish dialect with heavy phonetic spelling: Mrs. Mulligan says "Sure, I niver spint such a fine Christmas Eve in all me life before" and addresses the audience as "all of yeez." The effect is to mark the characters as both comic and authentic—a familiar stage Irishness that would have read as charming to contemporary audiences. Yet the dialect also carries the play's moral weight. Mrs. Mulligan's closing speech insists that a fine Christmas requires no money, only "loving hearts and loving hands, and merry faces of happy boys and girls." The contrast between the broad, accented humor and the earnest, universal message is typical of Hare's method. The same play that has a clothesline full of drying union suits and red flannels ends with a direct appeal to the spirit of Christmas as love. The dialect makes the sentiment feel homespun rather than preachy, but it also risks flattening the characters into types.

Minimal Scenery, Maximum Business

Hare's production notes repeatedly stress simplicity: "The scenery is very simple or may be dispensed with entirely." For Where the Mulligans Live, he specifies only entrances, a window, two tables, soap boxes, an upturned bucket, a wash-tub, and two chairs. Yet the stage is crowded with activity: a clothes line runs across the rear, hung with drying garments; tin cans filled with bright flowers stand on the table; colored prints adorn the walls. The effect is a deliberate clutter that signals poverty but also energy. Hare's note that "the stage must be arranged according to Mulligan taste" suggests a kind of aesthetic of makeshift abundance. This tension between minimal means and maximal visual detail mirrors the plays' thematic opposition of material lack and spiritual plenty. The physical production itself becomes a demonstration of the moral: you don't need money to make a scene.

Readers approaching this collection should pay attention to the stage directions and production notes, which often contain more specific character and setting information than the dialogue. Hare's plays were written for amateur groups with limited budgets and large casts of children, and the texts reflect that practical origin. The tension between sentimental uplift and knockabout comedy is not a flaw but a feature of the genre. For producers, the notes offer a rare window into early twentieth-century community theater practice; for readers, the plays are best understood as scripts meant to be performed, not read silently.

There’s something tender about old holiday plays—how they ask so little, just a room and kids willing to be silly, and still leave you thinking about kindness afterward. It reminded me of the way Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy — A Reader’s Guide lingers, not for its grand ideas, but for its quiet, human warmth between all the laughter.