People are always going on about their Irish Catholic childhoods, and how thirty years later they’re still living in fear of eternal damnation. I don’t remember it being like that at all. Oh there were priests and prayers alright, and strange ceremonies where you wore a grown up suit, even though you were only six years old and shouldn’t have been wearing a suit of any kind. But I never felt I was bound for hell, and I never felt any of the overpowering guilt so many people talk about.

Browsing through some old photographs the other day, I came across pictures of myself and my brothers making our first communion. Looking back on those events as a slightly more mature and rational human being, I can’t help but think how crazy the whole thing was. We looked like dressed up dolls - six years old, barely able to see over the top of a table, and dressed in brand new miniature suits and ties. The girls had it worse, decked out like child brides taking part in a mass wedding, complete with veils and sparkling white shoes.

The superior Irish education system prepared us well for our first communion. Instead of learning six times tables, or how to spell difficult words like ‘statue,’ we were trained every afternoon for weeks in the proper way to eat the Body of Christ. It’s a surreal memory: all of us lining up in the classroom, and Miss Lally standing by the blackboard feeding us bits of paper and mumbling “Body of Christ.” We pretended to eat each piece, always careful not to let it touch our teeth, because if it touched your teeth it was destroyed and you had to get another. We were too afraid of Miss Lally to ever ask for another, and it was only paper anyway so we didn’t really care.

One afternoon a few weeks before our communion, we were marched across to the church for our first confession. Miss Lally had us well trained for that too, and we knew exactly what sins we should be confessing to the priest. The poor man must have been bored out of his mind. Thirty babbling kids, one after another, each confessing their sins for the first time, and each confessing the very same sins. We all disobeyed our parents, and fought with our brothers. And if we didn’t have any brothers to fight we fought with our sisters. Every one of us had brothers or sisters, because this was Ireland in 1978, and contraception and divorce were ugly words you only ever heard on American TV shows.

When we stepped out of the confessional we had to walk to the front of the church, kneel down, and say our penance of ten Hail Marys and a Glory Be. It was important to look sombre because it was a serious business, but at the same time we were supposed to feel absolved, having just been forgiven for disobeying our parents and fighting with our brothers.

The big day finally arrived in June and we made our way to the church. I got through the ordeal without too much difficulty, even though the Body of Christ kept sticking to the top of my mouth. It wasn’t like paper at all. Afterwards, we mingled around outside the church taking photographs to mark the occasion. Every boy in a suit and every girl in a tiny wedding dress were treated the same. Strangers would come up, pat you on the head and say things to your parents like: “You’ll be marrying them next,” and we would nod our heads and smile as if they’d just said the most interesting thing in the world. You had to be polite and smile, because they gave you money.

This was the only part of the whole thing that made any kind of sense to us. The money. After the cameras clicked their last click, you piled into whatever battered car you arrived in, and drove around the countryside visiting every relative you could lay any sort of claim to. Even third cousins would do. You stayed twenty minutes at each house, time enough for a biscuit and a cup of tea, and more than enough time for the forgotten relative to pat you on the head, tell your parents how they’d be marrying you next, and give you some money.

At one house we visited I was given two pounds, an impressive figure considering I barely knew the uncle’s name, and my older brother Colin got an English pound note. I never understood that, because I was wearing the suit and it was my first communion and Colin was just along for the ride.

We went through the whole process without ever knowing what it was all supposed to mean. We wore the clothes we were told to wear, we told the sins we were told to tell, and we ate the bread we were told to eat. But that’s organised religion for you. Two thousand years of Christianity brought us to six year old kids dressing up like married couples, and everyone went along with it as if it were the most normal and sane thing in the world.

How crazy is that?