A Child’s Christmas In Wales

Since moving to the US I have taken to reading Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas In Wales each year. My father’s side of my family is from Wales and I lived in South East Wales for 17 years. My home is in Maui, my heart is in Wales.

Reading Thomas’ account of Christmases that he had spent as a child in Wales takes me back to locations that used to be so close, and so common in mentions that I never took much notice of them. They were home. They were my local.

Now living half way round the world while these place do not seem foreign, they do feel of a different time and place. Thomas speaks of a time before I was born and of an experience that in essence has probably changed little through the passage of time. The details might be different but the experiences I imagine are much the same.

This year instead of reading the poem, I listened to an audio book of Thomas reading A Child’s Christmas In Wales himself. Listening to the reading brought Thomas' words to life in a way that reading his poem myself had not done. I heard Thomas' personal experiences of a Christmas in Wales coming through. His intonation, his speed and flow of reading. I felt closer to his Christmas' in Wales.

Maybe I have started another tradition, or added a little depth to my annual readings?