A Child’s Christmas in Wales – Dylan Thomas

This rich, touching story is part of many family Christmas traditions (including my own). Here it is read by the author, Dylan Thomas. The story is the Christmas memories of a man who is recalling scenes from his childhood for a young boy – a boy who asks wonderful, intermittent questions throughout the story.

Here are a few of illustrator Fritz Eichenberg’s woodcuts from an edition published in 1969 (with excerpts).

In Winter

“December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, although there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats.”

---

The Gifts

“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”

---

The Uncles

“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.”

(NOTE: This is from the Art Junkie archives, last posted in 2023)

About Dylan Thomas, here.

The full text of A Child’s Christmas in Wales via Project Gutenberg Canada, here.

More about the engravings of illustrator Fritz Eichenberg, here.

A personal note: My favourite part of this story is Miss Prothero, the aunt, and the fire brigade. My father read this to us every Christmas Eve in childhood (and for some years beyond) while other households in our neighbourhood listened to The Night Before Christmas. My maternal grandmother was transplanted from Wales and so the lilting cadence is familiar to me. (You may want to find an English or North American recording if Dylan Thomas’s Welsh accent is difficult.)