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

Send the kids outside to romp, take off your apron, stash the light-hanging ladder, and join us on Saturday, December 12, 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. The Uncles (from A Child’s Christmas in Wales) Illustration by Fritz Eichenberg “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 – despite the essay’s title – is geared toward listeners 10 and older. First-come, first-seated; space is limited.