The last on my list of beloved Christmas stories is Dylan’s Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales, a piece that is best appreciated when read aloud. Below by the unforgettable Richard Burton who I was lucky to see perform on stage many, many years ago.

In case you don’t have the time to listen, Thomas paints a picture of a seaside village where there was always snow at Christmas (but no reindeer), where young boys pelted cats with snowballs unless there was something more exciting … like a fire at the Prothero’s. Where there were always uncles … “breathing like dolphins” … and postmen with roses for noses as they delivered packages. Where there were always the useful presents and the useless presents. Where young boys left footprints in the snow so huge that the villagers would surely think hippos had invaded. Back when there were “wolves in Wales.” (of course, there haven’t been wolves in Wales since the days of King Arthur but such is a child’s imagination!)

When and where I was a child, there was rarely snow at Christmas. My family lived too far from relatives to find uncles snoring like dolphins in the living room or aunties sneaking a few too many sips of the cooking sherry and breaking out in song. And we had only a few traditions: My sister and I always made chocolate fudge. She had self-control but I always ate too much and got sick to my stomach. Mother always made dates stuffed with walnuts and rolled in powdered sugar for our guests: Friends and neighbors who were also far from, or estranged, from family. But they generally arrived with bags of chips and take out pizzas, drank all the alcohol in the house and then left behind those dates.

And then, too exhausted to make a proper sit-down meal, we’d end the evening next to the fire, eating popcorn and listening to records. This song I always associate with Christmas Eve. I mean, who doesn’t?

My father was the grandchild of Norwegian immigrants. Their Santa equivalent is called Julenisse and he’s either a gnome or an elf or a troll and where do gnomes and trolls live? Deep in the woods or deep underground with all of those wolves who used to roam Wales!

Happy Christmas!