Classics Review: A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas is prose that's poetry, written simply and magically, telling stories from the Christmastime of his youth, just as the title says. Stories of kitchen fires and snowballs, of Uncles falling asleep bellies full, Aunties nipping at the wine, and of haunted caroling, all laced with a dry and straight-faced humor. There is much I miss and fail to understand in these old words, not the least since it was written a long time ago now. Also that it's British, and even more that it's Welsh, being not only other times but other places and people I've never known. Also that A Child's Christmas in Wales is Dylan Thomas with his self-mythic images of "the two-tongued sea" and the "harp-shaped hills." With his pictures of "birds the color of red-flannel petticoats," "fish-freezing waves," "a duchess-faced horse," and bells that "rang their tidings over the bandaged town," while walking through the cold "with taproom noses" as they "huffed and puffed, making ghosts with our breath" under the "silent one-clouded heavens" without even "the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets." But even if there's much that I don't grasp from A Child's Christmas in Wales, living in our time here and now, I still gain all that wonderful sound and syllable, whether I catch every bit or not. Perhaps these sentiments are sentimental, but all children, wherever they grew up, have the right to remember: "It was always snowing at Christmas." [5★]
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