December 25, 2022
"A Child’s Christmas in Wales" by Dylan Thomas
For decades, On Christmas Eve or Christmas Day I've read aloud my battered copy of "A Child’s Christmas in Wales," copyright 1954 by New Directions, illustrations copyright 1969 by Fritz Eichenberg
FIRST PAGE OF THE BOOK
Recounted in the voice of a man recounting his memories of Christmas in his home town in Wales.
"One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was 12 or whether it snowed for 12 days and 12 nights when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two -tongued sea, like a cold and head long moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays, resting at the rim of the carol singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen."
THEN THIS PAGE the young narrator says...
“But that was not the same as snow,” I say. “Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam, and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely white, ivied the walls and settled on top of the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunderstorm of white, torn Christmas cards.”.
Stop. Take a minute ro read this aloud. Right now. Read it a couple of times till you get the rhythm. I wonder if you can picture it as your mouth, tongue and lips wrap themselves around the postcard description.
The words came naturally to Thomas. Everyone around him spoke in the Welch tongue, rich with simile, metaphor and descriptive language as thick as the white smoke from the peat turf drifting from chimneys in his neighborhood.
The language, the imagery, the words... beg to be read aloud. And capture the wonder of a lad with Christmas Day unfolding during December in Wales. I am old enough and lucky enough to have fond memories of sitting on the cushioned piano bench at the end of my grandmother and grandfather's dining room table, aunt and uncles along each side, my grandmother at the head of the table and my grandfatber to her left, where he would carve the turkey.
I read to my fourth graders every year of my 34 year career. I have a gift for language, speak functional French and Hindi. I feel the rhythm of Thomas's prose, revel in the way they roll off my tongue with a Welsh lilt.
I've listened to Thomas's version, It is heresy and self aggrandizing but I read it with the pace and flair of a natural born reader of stories. And that the bard would buy me a Guinness after listening to my version.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Thomas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Child's_Christmas_in_Wales
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January 24, 2023 in Commentaries | Permalink | Comments (0)