Dylan Thomas: A Child's Christmas in Wales

Back in November I scanned a few of Trina Schart Hyman's illustrations of A Child's Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas to share with you, and I had already typed up the start of the story, and loaded the YouTube. Bear with me as I nurse my hands a little longer. On the horizon: voice recognition software for my computer. Merry Christmas to me!

This is a boy's adventure I post, in honor of my soon-to-be-born grandson. Dylan Thomas's fantastically and mythically detailed descriptions should prompt us all to get our own memories of Christmas down, and giggle again and again. OK, on with the master.

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 remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong 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 my 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.

Pull up a child, and continue reading here . . .

Listen to Dylan Thomas himself read the story in his lugubrious but simultaneously old-child-joyful voice below . . .