Dakota Beacon

Got a treat for you and your family today! It’s December and that, to most of us, means Christmas time! Everyone complains all the time about how “commercialized” Christmas has become and how we have “lost the spirit” of Christmas. We do lose touch with family traditions. Families grow up and move away. We are increasingly nomadic and scattered, despite our advanced means of communication over vast distances. It is the closeness we miss. No amount of tinsel or expensive Black Friday gift-giving can make up for this.

Most of us have memories of a special Christmas - something special we did or gave or received or of special people in our lives, some a distance memory, some as close as yesterday despite the years. In quiet moments we think back . . . .

It was in this spirit that Welsh poet Dylan Thomas wrote A Child’s Christmas in Wales. It is the kind of stream-of-consciousness kind of reverie we engage in at those moments. We all wish we could have those moments back if only to share them with our kids who weren’t there, to live them again for a brief time maybe just before we fall asleep, or in that time of late afternoon when all is quiet and memories find their way back.

Here we have a family in turn-of-the-last-century Wales. It’s a lot like the family we grew up in, with eccentric aunts and silly uncles, lots of food, presents, wrappings, snow, carols around the piano, stories, childhood friends, the warmth of a fire. And the glow of family at Christmas. It’s all here – have some cookies and milk or a “nice glass of port” and warm up with a long-forgotten memory.

A Child’s Christmas in Wales: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BTSQYdBuZY

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