Ham Gillett presents Dylan Thomas’s Lyrical Portrait of Holidays Past

Send the kids to romp outside, take off your apron, stash the light-hanging ladder, and join us on Saturday, December 14, from 12:00-12:30 OR 1:00-1:30 for Ham Gillett’s traditional Wassail reading.

The Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas looks back with a child’s-eye view of a magical time of presents, family, and newly fallen snow in the seasonal classic A Child’s Christmas in Wales, written in the early 1950s.

Ham Gillett has shared this story during Wassail Weekend for more years than he can remember. He offers us a time to be still, to close our eyes, and be transported by Thomas’s matchless weaving of lyrical words and evocative images.

“Our snow … came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely-ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards.” – Dylan Thomas

***

This reading is free and open to the public and – in spite of the essay’s title – is geared toward listeners 10 and older. First come, first seated, space is limited.