Thursday, December 19, 2013


A Child’s Christmas in Wales
by Dylan Thomas


Dylan Thomas in youth

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 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 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.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows –– eternal, ever since Wednesday –– that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar cat. But soon the voice grew louder. 

"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.

"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."

There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting.

"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and ran out of the house to the telephone box.
A snow-laden country scene in Wales

"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires." 


But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same 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 -ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."


Our snow ... came shawling out of the ground
"
Were there postmen then, too?"

"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."

"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"

"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."

"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells." 

"There were church bells, too."

"Inside them?"

"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our fence."

"Get back to the postmen"

"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the doors with blue knuckles ...." 

"Ours has got a black knocker...."

"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."

"And then the presents?"

"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on fishmonger's slabs.


"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's hump, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was gone."

"Get back to the Presents." 

"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why." 

"Go on the Useless Presents."

"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches, cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall. And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?" 

"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle and sugar fags, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling pokers. 



Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers." 

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing, no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite, to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. 

For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. 

I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar. 

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.


"I bet people will think there's been hippos."


"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"

"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him under the ear and he'd wag his tail."


"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr. Daniel's house.


"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."

"Let's write things in the snow." 

"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."

Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills, and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly; and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with rum, because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?"

"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town. 

"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said. "

Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading
.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept. 
~ § ~

Dylan Thomas in later life

14 comments:


  1. Bood morning, everybody! Greetings of the Season to be Jolly and a most hearty, wholesome, happy, and appropriately reverent Christmas to you -- whether you choose to celebrate the occasion or not.

    I am very deliberately reposting the following remarks as a sampling of the level of intellect, abysmal depth of sensitivity, and empathy to which I -- and many others -- are routinely treated on these blogs -- no matter WHAT the subject or the season is supposed to be.

    I take this dismal performance as clear affirmation of a long held belief that our culture, long in a state of advanced degeneration, is reaching "critical mass" in its relentless journey toward self-annihilation.

    Take a look. Be sure to keep some antacid tablets hsndy. You're sure to need them. Remember this claptrap is ostensibly a series of response to story about Christmas by Dylan Thomas, one of the most brilliant, colorful and evocative writers who ever lived.
    _________________________


    Anonymous said...
    who the hell cares?

    Not anyone!!

    Go to AOW's Blog and write it, someone there "MAY" care. MAYBE!

    December 19, 2013 at 7:28 AM
    Anonymous Anonymous said...
    Rational Nation USA said...
    Mr. FreeThinke, recently you made it perfectly clear on your ever so non benign forum that my independent views and questioning were not welcom, suggesting I take them elsewhere. I assured you then I was more than happy to comply with your invitation to stay away.

    "I HAVE NOT BEEN BACK since. Let me assure you sir I do not intend on commenting on your unholy blog in the future. I shall leave it at that."


    I BET THAT HE COMES BACK HERE AGAIN TODAY! The LYING son of a bitch that he is

    December 19, 2013 at 7:51 AM
    A. Reader said...
    Why don’t you check your Christian morality bullshit at the door and learn to pick your fights where and when they belong. . But DO NOT go to liberal, or progressive sites looking for sympathy and or support of the people who disagree with you and I’ve piced a word “disagree” to be nice.
    We do not give a rats ass about YOUR trivial bullshit, your poems, or your music that only infuriates us when you say the things that you do.. INCLUDING YOUR HATE SHAW WEEK, IN FACT EVERYTHING THAT you SAY THERE MAKES NO SENSE.

    Nothing that you say there matter to anyone and stop picking fights that alienate us over OUR President and OUR First Lady.

    Sin is sin for believers so stop bitching about what RN or anyone else there says.
    If you want to partake in the blog subject you know where to go, but if your confused, just DON'T go to any liberal blog!!!!

    December 19, 2013 at 7:57 AM
    The Gallantwarrior said...
    Liberals just can't seem to get their heads on straight, with them it's either agree with us or get the hell out of here!


    The Dumb Bastards.

    December 19, 2013 at 8:05 AM

    ____________________________

    Well there you have the first four responses of the day to Dylan Thomas's marvelous story, which, of course no one has read or intends to read.


    None of this has anything to do with me. It is, however, a reflection of the sort of crassness, vulgarity and flabby, underdeveloped, warped, indoctrinated intelligence you tend get from a sordidly secular, de-Christianized, militantly shallow, perversely conditioned, hedonistic society blindly following The Pied Piper (i.e. The Antichrist) into the bowels of Perdition.

    Happily for me and those few others who still have some inkling what is good for them and what is not, I'm immune to the slings and arrows and honestly feel deep sorrow for the Lost Souls who can think of nothing better to do with their idle moments than waste them flinging the moral equivalent of spitballs into an atmosphere craving hope, love, joy and salvation.

    ReplyDelete
  2. btw - We do disagree upon method, FT. You intend to chastise us to "virtue", where an "exhortation" might not prove sufficient. I'm beginning to accept the futility of said approach... and simply set the the table. If others insist upon spoiling our appetites by placing poisoned apples amongst our offerings, let those sins be on them.

    Happy holidays!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks so much, Thersites, for the link to Thomas's reading of his story at Steinway Hall in 1952. He had a wonderful voice. However, I still find great enjoyment in reading these things for myself, and developing my own imaginary concepts of character and scene. etc., BUT hearing Thomas read is a treat, because -- unlike MANY authors -- Thomas COULD READ. Most writers are inept at reading aloud -- dry as dust, or singsong monotony.

    Anyway thanks for providing the link.

    ReplyDelete
  4. As to "method," Thersites, I don't really disagree with you on principle, but I cannot tolerate anyone's using this blog as the moral equivalent of a public toilet. That's what happened to David Horowitz when he tried to permit total freedom at FrontPage Magazine. All it takes is ONE really determined troll (aka the rotten apple in the proverbial barrel) to ruin an otherwise worthy venue.

    Of course chastisement does not have the desired effect -- if anything, it only eggs the bastards on --but there's a certain satisfaction to articulating the truth in public, however much mockery and scorn it may bring.

    The REAL trouble with blogging is that it has taught me to hold too many in contempt and utter disregard.

    Don't YOU ever tire of casting pearls before swine? Most of us are not sufficiently bright or informed to keep up with you, ergo you don't get the appreciation you deserve.

    I do try, but not often enough, because frankly I have all I can do to keep up with the Brahms Project, this blog of dubious value, writing verse, and keeping the cats properly tended, the hearth swept, the clothes washed, and the vermin out of the kitchen, etc.

    HAPPY DAZE!

    TO BE JOLLY AVOID FOLLY. ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. It's a fine Christmas piece.

    But I wonder if you could find as much humor in something like Jean Shepherd's, A Christmas Story?

    "I did it, I shot my eye out."

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm sorry, Ducky. I must confess that I have always had a deep and abiding dislike for Jean Shepherd. I happen to know from firsthand experience that he had a deleterious effect on two of my high school classmates, who mistakenly regarded him as "hot shit."

    Way way back in the 1950's as a teenager Shepherd never failed to rub me the wrong way. I'm sure the main reason I generally avoid Bill O'Reilly's program today, beside Bill's generally obnoxious overbearing manner, is the ubiquitous presence of Dennis Miller, whose, grating, sneering, flippant, low-class, smart ass Midwestern dialect and heavy-handed sarcasm is so painfully reminiscent of Jean Shepherd's radio voice I either change channels immediately, or literally run from the room, if others are controlling the choice of programming.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Good post FT, tis a pity tat it is not appreciated by more folks

    ReplyDelete
  8. It is certainly your blog to manage as you see fit.

    I'm beginning to accept the futility of said approach...

    ...only JUST beginning, for I have only recently come to accept that there IS no END, no ultimate "victory"... there is only "perseverance."

    And thanks for your words of encouragement. The occasional affirmation we get helps more than we often consciously realize. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  9. What a beautifully written piece! I'm not sure that I've ever before read this.

    I find more and more as I grow older the truth of this phrase: the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep.

    Sometimes the voices I hear are sad, but mostly they are happy voices letting me briefly live again those halcyon days of my childhood. Sometimes I think that it is such a pity that childhood has to end and thereby bring the world too close.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Thersites,
    This story is on YouTube? And read by Dylan Thomas himself just 2 days before my own birth on February 24, 1952!

    Thank you for posting that link. I've nabbed it for various purposes.

    ReplyDelete
  11. FT,
    Some of us do appreciate what you're trying to do here at your blog.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I'm glad that you both enjoyed the link. My own attention span for reading has declined over the past few years, so I'm coming more and more to appreciate audio books.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thersites,
    I find that I'm addicted to audio books in my old age.

    ReplyDelete

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