"All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find."

"birds the color of red-flanneled petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills."

"'But that was not the same snow,' I say. 'Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it 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.' "

...but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush.

Dylan Thomas knew the answer - that life is better lived with a dark passion than a squeaky-clean complaisance; that with all our flaws, we are divine creations, deserving of forgiveness and acceptance, laughter and love.

Figgy Pudding

• 1/2 Pound of figs
• 1 1/4 Cups of bread crumbs
• 1 Cup of almonds or walnuts
• 1 Cup of light brown sugar (scant)
• 1/2 Cup of candied grapefruit peel
• 1/4 Cup of candied lemon peel
• 3 Tablespoons of melted butter
• 4 Eggs, beaten
• 1/2 Teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1/4 Teaspoon of nutmeg

Directions:

Chop the figs and mix with fluffy crumbs.
Brown the almonds or walnuts (it using almonds, they should be blanched and skinned and chopped. Walnuts should be chopped).
Mix with all the other ingredients.
Put the mixture into a greased mold and steam 2 1/2 hours (The pudding may also be baked in a 325 oven for 1 hour).

Moist, soft grapefruit peel adds a very good flavor.
Serve with a brandy and cream sauce.

According to legend, King Arthur made merrie in 521 surrounded by "minstrels, gleemen, harpers, pipe-players, jugglers, and dancers."

Arthur's Stone is on Cefn Bryn, Gower. Daylan was familiar with this prehistoric monument from his walks.

Today, the British Isles usher in the holiday season with jubilant sound: church bells pealing, handbells ringing, choirs singing, and buskers and waits performing on street corners.

Wandering minstrels traveled from hamlet to castle, performing carols in the distant past. In later years, villages had their own bands of waits.

Waits were originally watchmen who patrolled the streets and byways of the old walled cities keeping guard against fire and singing out the hours of the night. During the holiday season, they would include some carols for the people along the way, although some folks complained that they would rather get a good nights sleep than have somebody singing under their window. Eventually the term was used to describe groups of musicians who sang and played for various civic events during the Christmas season

Caroling is particularly popular in Wales where it is called eisteddfodde and is often accompanied by a harp. Every village has its own choir of trained singers and everyone else joins in. Each year an official set of words for a new Christmas carol is distributed to all the towns, and all vie with each other in producing the best music, which is judged in a national competition. The winning tune will be sung the following Christmas season by all the choirs and will become part of the great body of carols produced since the custom began in the tenth century.

In many areas a person is chosen to be the Mari Lwyd which means "Grey Mare." The Mari Lwyd leads a group of mummers in travels around the city or town, usually to celebrate the arrival of the New Year. He is draped in gray-white and carries a ribbon bedecked horse's skull on a long pole. Anyone given the "bite" by the horse's jaws must pay a fine. The mummers visit previously selected houses where they bang loudly on the door with a stick and sing out impromptu verses. Eventually they are invited in for cakes and cider.

" 'But that was not the same snow,' I say. 'Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it 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.' "

• whether it snowed for six days and six nights
• whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights
• I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find
• It was snowing.
• It was always snowing at Christmas
• it snowed and it snowed.
• But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."
• But that was not the same snow,"
• "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky,
• snow grew overnight
• Christmas and the snow
• the irreligious snow
• with spats of snow
• when out of a snow-clogged side lane
• the snow descending,
• Through the scudding snow
• "Let's write things in the snow."
• "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"
• snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills
• wheel-rutted snow
• in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew.
• the unending smoke-colored snow

He talked about his childhood in suburban Swansea - in Cwmdonkin Park, at nursery school, in the lane between home and school, where the children would tell tales and where fanciful boast that he could fly took wing and bore him aloft over school, trees, chimneys, dockyards and town. But, he added,

This is only a dream. The ugly, lovely, at least to me, town is alive, exciting and real thought war has made a hideous hole in it. I do not need to remember a dream. the reality is there. The fine live people, the spirit of Wales itself.

He had an unwritten rule that all talks on the BBC Welsh Service should end with a reference to the spirit of Wales...He could escape to London for his film work, but then had to travel for up to eight hours to spend the weekend with his family. He quickly lost all sense of harmony with his Welsh surroundings: he was no longer sure he wanted to continue living in Wales. He began to talk about moving to America, or leaving the country completely. In flight from the present he turned once again to the past, and in December 1945 he wrote and recorded Memories of Christmas a heavily nostalgic account of childhood Christmases in Swansea. Later from this he would fashion one of his best-loved works, A Child's Christmas in Wales

• "Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush."
• "Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest;"

• waiting for cats,
• But there were cats.
• Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls,
• the green of their eyes.
• The wise cats never appeared.
• our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar cat
• This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row.
• cats in their fur-abouts watched the fires

Chthonic gods - Ge (the Earth itself, the sole power which generates Sky; she is the cunning one who overcomes the oppression of Sky through trickery - she invents steel and makes the sickle.)

The Two Goddesses of Eleusis; Cybele; Dionysos; Fates; Furies; Pan; Persephone (Queen of the lower world - goddess associated with death) as well as local gods of rivers, springs, trees, and mountains.

Chthonic gods had rites (called orgies but not meaning the same thing as our word) that tended to be private, nocturnal, solemn,( sounds like Dylan's cats doesn't it) and concerned with averting negative influences.

Dylan, a Welsh sea god with golden hair nicknamed 'Son of the Wave'.

Son of Arianrhod ("silver wheel", thus, the moon, the virgin goddess of the sky and fertility is one of the descendants of Don, the mother-goddess. She gave birth to Dylan and a blob, that later became Lleu, immediately after she stepped over the magic wand of her uncle, Math.)

Dylan's deathgroan is the roar of the tide at mouth of the river Conway. He was nicknamed 'Son of the Wave' because he swam off into the sea after being baptized and could move in the water better than a fish.

All the sea lamented, when Dylan was slain by his uncle Govannon, the smith god. The weapons Govannon make are unfailing in their aim and deadliness, the armor unfailing in its protection. Also a healer, he brewed the gods ale. Those who drink from his sacred cup need no longer fear old age and infirmity. He did not know who Dylan was when he slew him or possibly he slew out of envy over his nephew's ability to swim like a fish.

Dylan is brother of Lleu, a sun god and a hero god, young, strong, radiant with hair of gold, master of all arts, skills and crafts. One day Lleu arrived at the court of the Dagda and demanded to be admitted to the company of the gods. The gatekeeper asked him what he could do. For every skill or art Lleu named, the gatekeeper replied that there was already one among the company who had mastered it. Lleu at last pointed out that they had no one who had mastered them all, and so gained a place among the deities.

Lleu, the most popular and widely worshipped of the Celtic gods, in Ireland he is called Lugh or Lug. Lugh's most famous son was Cú Chulainn (Cu Chulainn), the greatest hero in Irish myth. His name in its various forms was taken by the cities of Lyons, Loudun, Laon, Leon, Lieden, Leignitz, Carlisle and Vienna.

Constructing life stories provides us an opportunity to discover our experience is replete with meaning. A life reviewed reaffirms the validity of our journey, showing us that through all mistakes and pain, there was also joy and bliss.

The mere act of writing our stories helps us put into perspective what we have gained and lost. We find themes that thread through the tapestry of life; we identify what Germans called lebenslauf, the sweep of life.

It is a natural stage of human development for elders to look back over life in an attempt to make sense of it. Writing their story can offer comfort as well as the sweet magic of insight. "Yes, that's what my life has been about!"

Read more - the site includes links to writing aids. Association of Personal Historians

Dirt, the body; Water, the mind;
Wind, emotions; Fire is energy.
Smoke, the spirit, in peace by the word,
In crisis by the sword, within or without when
indoctrination fails.

When time, echoed long before the lamp
Now longer since the darkness
In the east wind has arisen
And a hundred nights are eyeless.

When fire, curls smoke whirls in winter chill
Candles weep their wick away
Morning in her mirror sees
Crystal hoarfrost blown array.

While doves, enchant where olives grow
Turban three rim sounds of time
Trade stars while moon clouds bending low
Burst mountain carols, Peace by Thy Word.

Ad Deum, qui laetificat juventutem meam
Gloria Gloria Saint Nicholas rose
Children, we grieve our night wails, benumb
In excelsis gloria, our baby wiggles his toes

*To God, who giveth joy to my youth

My Christmas memories -- as a child, not always the adult ones -- were always happy ones. I was (and am) an only child. My father was a World War I veteran and received a 100% disability pension. This meant that my father didn't go off to work and while I did not have any brothers or sisters, I did have a set of parents in the house.

My mother was of Swedish heritage and celebrated Christmas in the usual Nordic-American way. She was Protestant. My father was of Italian heritage, raised Catholic, but converted when he married my mother. So while my uncles (his brothers) and my Italian grandparents made Christmas a very holy day, complete with votive candles, trips to the Church, Christmas trees with Jesus in the Manger under it and branches decorated with holy symbols, visits by the Priest, and sometimes religious parades outside (they lived in the city, I lived in the country) -- in our house and that of our rural neighbors Christmas had an all-American look.

I was the apple of my mother's eye. I guess I knew that as a child but only many years later did I come to realize how much she and my father sacrificed for me. I received presents which were financially far beyond the limit of the meager WWI pension that vets received in those days. (Remember the veterans march on Washington in those days because so many of them were poverty stricken?) So underneath the tree on Christmas mornings there were always presents reminding me of how much I was loved. I have no memory of what each of my parents gave to the other but I have no doubt that I received 95% of the "loot."

And then, of course, there was Santa Claus. We had no fireplace in our small humble house. It had no furnace either. It was heated by a coal stove in the dining room with a pipe leading to the chimney. I was always bothered that Santa had no way of getting into the house but was assured that Santa was not a dumbbell. My father always made it a point to leave the inside door leading to the cellar open and was told that Santa would come in that way. Each year I dutifully hung my stocking right next to that door. I knew the "orange and coal" story for "good and bad" boys because we kids always talked about it but in my house I always felt comfortable that coal was not in the picture.

In those days I slept in a Morris Chair (anyone remember those?) It opened out flat to make a bed the right size for a small child and I always slept on this right near the stove and which, coincidentally, was not too far away from that very important door. One Christmas night -- I was seven years old at the time -- I woke up just in time to see my father putting gifts into the stocking. And so much for that! One era of my childhood ended but Christmas did not.

One November when I was nine years old I was told that I would have the usual Christmas gifts but also a special gift on December 1st. While rummaging around in the attic that November where I wasn't supposed to be, I spotted a poorly hidden brand new bicycle and gleefully told my parents that I had found the December 1st present. They told me that I was a bit wrong with the dates -- that the bicycle was the big gift to be given to me on Christmas and I couldn't touch it until then. The December 1st gift turned out to be my very first account in the bank -- I believe it was $2. It was a marvelous Christmas.

Two months later my mother died from a kidney infection. My father tried in his sort-of inept way to continue my Christmases but they were never the same. Not that they were unhappy but the light in my life had gone out and maturity had settled in a bit earlier than it is supposed to. My father never married again (probably because I made a fuss that I would have only one mother) but I still had my mother's sister and my father's brothers who continued to shower me with books and other gifts.

Christmas throughout my childhood furnished happy memories and for this I am grateful.

Robby

Robby

You all know the Yule Cat
And that Cat was huge indeed.
People didn't know where he came from
Or where he went.

He opened his glaring eyes wide,
The two of them glowing bright.
It took a really brave man
To look straight into them.

His whiskers, sharp as bristles,
His back arched up high.
And the claws of his hairy paws
Were a terrible sight.

He gave a wave of his strong tail,
He jumped and he clawed and he hissed.
Sometimes up in the valley,
Sometimes down by the shore.

He roamed at large, hungry and evil
In the freezing Yule snow.
In every home
People shuddered at his name.

If one heard a pitiful "meow"
Something evil would happen soon.
Everybody knew he hunted men
But didn't care for mice.

He picked on the very poor
That no new garments got
For Yule - who toiled
And lived in dire need.

From them he took in one fell swoop
Their whole Yule dinner
Always eating it himself
If he possibly could.

Hence it was that the women
At their spinning wheels sat
Spinning a colorful thread
For a frock or a little sock.

Because you mustn't let the Cat
Get hold of the little children.
They had to get something new to wear
From the grownups each year.

And when the lights came on, on Yule Eve
And the Cat peered in,
The little children stood rosy and proud
All dressed up in their new clothes.

Some had gotten an apron
And some had gotten shoes
Or something that was needed
That was all it took.

For all who got something new to wear
Stayed out of that pussy-cat's grasp
He then gave an awful hiss
But went on his way.

Whether he still exists I do not know.
But his visit would be in vain
If next time everybody
Got something new to wear.

Now you might be thinking of helping
Where help is needed most.
Perhaps you'll find some children
That have nothing at all.

Perhaps searching for those
That live in a lightless world
Will give you a happy day
And a Merry, Merry Yule.

We reached the black bulk of the house.
"What shall we give them? Hark the Herold?"

No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three...

And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole..."

"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said.

We returned home through the desolate poor sea-facing streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the thick wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock-birds and the hooters of ships out in the white and whirling bay.

That bright white Snowball of Christmas

Now out of that bright white snowball of Christmas gone comes the stocking, the stocking of stockings, that hung at the foot of the bed with the arm of a golliwog dangling over the top and small bells ringing in the toes. There was a company, gallant and scarlet but never nice to taste thought I always tried when very young, of belted and busbied and musketed lead soldiers so soon to lose their heads and legs in the wars on the kitchen table after the tea-things, the mince-pies, and the cakes that I helped to make by stoning the raisons and eating them, had been cleared away; and a bag of moist and many-coloured jelly-babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by a mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a rubber buffalo, or it may have been a horse, with a yellow head and haphazard legs; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unduck-like noise, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wishes to be a cow; and a painting-book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea, and the animals any colour I pleased: and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under a flight of rainbow-beaked and pea-green birds.

Christmas mourning was always over before you could say Jack Frost. And look! suddenly the pudding was burning! Bang the gong and call the fire-brigade and the book-loving firemen! Someone found the silver threepenny-bit with a currant on it; and the someone was always Uncle Arnold. The motto in my cracker read:

Let's all have fun this Christmas Day
Let's play and sing and shout hooray!

and the grown-ups turned their eyes towards the ceiling, and Aunt Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clockwork mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. And someone put a glass bowl full of nuts on the littered table, and my uncle said, as he said once every year: 'I've got a shoe-nut here. Fetch me a shoe-horn to open it, boy.'

And dinner was ended.

to be continued...

That bright white Snowball of Christmas

And I remember that on the afternoon of Christmas Day, when the others sat around the fire and told each other that this was nothing, no, nothing, to the great snowbound and turkey-proud yule-log-crackling holly-berry-bedizined and kissing-under-the-mistletoe Christmas when they were children, I would go out, school-capped and gloved and mufflered, with my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack and to walk with them throught the silent snowscape of our town.

We went padding throught the streets, leaving huge deep footprints in the snow, on the hidden pavements.

'I bet people'll think there's been hippoes.'
'What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down Terrace Road?'
'I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him under the ear and he'd wag his tail..."
'What would you do if you saw two hippoes...?'
Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippoes clanked and blundered and battered through the scudding snow towards us as we passed by Mr. Daniel's house.
'Let's post Mr Daniel a snowball throught his letter-box.'
'Let's write things in the snow.'
'Let's write "Mr Daniel looks like a spaniel" all over his lawn.'
'Look,' Jack said, 'I'm eating a snow-pie.'
'What's it taste like?'
'Like snow-pie,' Jack said.
Or we walked on the white shore.

That bright white Snowball of Christmas

'Can the fishes see it's snowing?'
'They think it is the sky falling down.'
The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea.
'All the old dogs have gone.'

Dogs of a hundred mingled makes yapped in the summer at the sea-rim and yelped at the trespassing mountains of the waves.

'I bet St. Bernards would like it now.'

And we were snowblind travellers lost on the north hills, and the great dewlapped dogs, with brandy-flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying 'Excelsior'.

We returned home through the desolate poor sea-facing streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the thick wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock-birds and the hooters of ships out in the white and whirling bay.

A Festive Letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson

5 Cwmdonkin Drive,
Uplands,
Swansea.

December 25th 1933

Another Afterthought: Christmas Day
Thank you for the cigarettes. The Christmas dinner over, and the memories of it — so far at least — more in the mouth than in the belly. I have been sprawling in an armchair, (yes we posses one), smoking the first of your so very kind and unexpected presents. While the family is collected around the wireless, listening to the voice of His Majesty, let me write a note to you to tell you how glad I was to read your last letter and horrified to think that you thought Robert Graves necessarily indicated the return of John Player•... And my stlye this gray December evening ( a reference to robins will appear now any moment) is as heavy as the brandied pudding now resting in revolt, deep in the chambers of my intenstines, against too much four-and-sixpenny port and vegetables.

Child: Mother, how many pips in a tangerine?
Mother: Shut up, you little bastard.

My gifts are arrayed in front of me: a startlingly yellow tie and a peculiar pair of string gloves from my sister; a cigarette case from my brother-in-law; ten cigars from my father; 50 cigarettes from a young woman in Battersea; a knitted thing from the manageress of the hotel near my Little Theatre; the complet Blake from another uncle; Mrs Munroe's 1923-1933 Anthology from a friend who writes communism; two James Joyce pamphlets from myself; while ouside hangs a neat, but tight, black hat from my mother, who has despaired for some time of the curves and angles of a decrepit trilby. That is all; and though your gift will vanish far more quickly than some of the others, it will last far longer in my memory than any of them...Goodby until tomorrow, when I hope that the heavy, academic idioms of this note will leave me lucid enough to write more and at more considerable length. The wireless is continually re-iterating the fact that Christmas is here, but Christmas, for me, is nearly over. How many more Christmases will these old eyes be blessed to see approach and vanish? Who knows: one far-off day I may gather my children (though a resolution denies it) around my spavined knee, tickle their chops, and tell them of the miracle of Christ and the devastating effect of too many nuts upon a young stomach.

• He sent her poems by Rober Graves; she sent him Player's cigarettes.

Siân James
Mother Christmas At Christmas there was a special concert when all the chapel children, even those from down Mill Bank who'd only started coming the Sunday School at the beginning of December, had a present from the Christmas tree.

In spite of the war, we had good presents, but our Father Christmas was always a hopeless failure, a mumbling old man with a slipping beard, that no one, not even the babies in Class 1, believed in.

Jenny Williams changed all that. One year, she came on in a little read cloak and bonnet. 'I'm Mother Christmas,' she said. 'My old man's been called up. Yes, he's gone from under my feet. Good job, too. He was always an old nuisance. And mean. Ooo. He used to spend more on those direty old reindeers than he did on me. Did you think he'd brought you those presents last year? No, it was the Ladies Sewing Circle. All he ever did was show off in his red suit. And that beard. I wasn't real. No. Did you think it was real? Of course you didn't.'

Mother Christmas was a huge success.

The Bestest Christmasm. m. f.


It was a time of darkness and poverty in the small New England city where Dot White and her three children lived. The night before Christmas they walked slowly up Main Street. There were Dot and Molly, her oldest, Davie, her son, and little Susie. She was three.

“Mama, I’m cold.”

Little Sue stopped and shivered. Her face crinkled up. She looked as if she wanted to cry.

“Oh, Susie, here. I’ll carry you for a while. Climb up here. Ooo, look at that window.”

Dot picked up her baby and walked with her to the store. The four of them stood and looked at the beautiful Christmas tree in McCartney’s Dry Goods Shop window. Glowing lights shone down on cotton batting snow. Gaily wrapped presents were underneath the tree. A cardboard fireplace stood at one side. Three red stockings with white toes and heels, jam packed with toys, hung from the mantel.

“Oh, Mama, it’s so beautiful,” Molly said. “I wish we could have a Christmas tree like that. We haven't had a nice one like that since Daddy went away.”

“I want Santa to bring me a red fire truck,” Davie said.

“I want a green lollipop!”

They all laughed at Sue when she said this. She stuck her mittened thumb in her mouth and grinned around it. Dot hugged her tight.

“It’s not much farther, Children.”

“Where are we going? My feet are cold, Mama.”

“Me, too.”

“And me!” Susie squealed.

They laughed again, and kept on walking until they reached a little store. There were trees propped against the wall outside. A man in a heavy black winter coat and knitted hat stood at the door stamping his feet.

“There you are, Dot. I’ve been waiting for you. Good thing you came. I was just getting ready to go home. It’s too cold to hang around here.”

“Hello, Mike,” Dot said in a cheerful voice. “Merry Christmas to you and yours!

“Merry Christmas, Dot and you children. Come on in. I’ve got something for you.”

They walked in the store and saw a tiny little black pot belly stove in the back. The three children ran to it. “There, Children. You get nice and warm before we walk home, but, for goodness sake, don’t touch that red hot stove!”

Dot turned around and talked for a minute with Mike, the Christmas tree man. “I’ve only got thirty-five cents, Mike. Is there anything I can buy with that?”

“Sure there is, Dot. For you and the kids the best is none too good. I’ve been saving this balsam for you. Looky here.”

He reached down and picked up a little tree. “Oh, that’s beautiful,” Dot cried. “Look, kids, we’ve got ourselves a Christmas tree!”

Molly and Davie and Susie ran over and stood in front of Mike and the tree. They oooed and ahed and clapped their hands. Dot pulled her change purse out of her pocket, reached in for some coins, and held them out to Mike.

“No, no, Dot. That’s all right. It’s Christmas. Go home and put some ornaments on. Let the children have their fun.”

“Oh, thank you, Mike, thank you. Merry Christmas to you! You’ve made this a wonderful one.”

She picked up the tree and held out her hand, “Come on, Susie, hold my hand. Molly, you hold Davie’s. We’re going home now and put those popcorn and cranberry ropes we made on this wonderful Christmas tree.”

That’s exactly what they did. They wound the ropes round and round the little tree. When they were finished it looked like fairyland. Dot made hot tea with cloves and a little bit of sugar in it. They sat around the Christmas tree and drank tea and sang carols until almost nine.

“Bedtime, Children. It’s time to hang your stockings up on the shelf over the kitchen stove.”

“Mama, my stocking has a hole in it. Santa won’t leave me anything ‘cause my present would fall out. Look. My big toe is sticking right out.” Davie held up his foot. He looked very worried.

“Here, I’ll fix it,” Dot said. She pulled a safety pin out of her pocket and pinned up the hole. “There, that will do. After Santa comes and you get your present in the morning, I’ll sew up that hole.” Davie grinned and hugged his mother.

She tucked her three children all snug in the big double bed in the next room and pulled quilts up around them. “Goodnight now, Children. Sleep tight and warm. Santa is coming, and if you’re awake, he’ll fly right by in that sleigh of his.”

Early in the morning, Susie was the first to get up. She stood in the kitchen doorway and looked at the Christmas tree standing by the door. Then she looked up at the shelf over the stove. The three stockings that hung limply over it the night before were full of mysterious things.

“Quick, quick!” She ran to the other room where her brother and sister were stirring in the bed. “Santa came! He did! He did! Get out of bed and come here.”

The kitchen door opened and Dot walked in carrying a little brown bag. “Merry, Merry Christmas! My, it’s cold this morning. Come, Children, and eat your breakfast. I have a surprise for you.”

“Presents first, Mama!”

Dot put the bag on the table and took her old blue coat off and hung it on a chair. “Oh, all right,” she laughed. “Come on, you kids. Let’s open all our presents.”

She reached up and took the stockings off the hooks on the shelf over the stove. “Here, this is for Molly and this is for Davie and this for Susie. Merry Christmas, everybody!”

There were a box of crayons and two sheets of paper in Molly’s stocking. She smiled a great big smile. Davie pulled a little red fire truck out of the stocking with a safety pin in it. He plopped down on his knees. “Rrrrm, rrrrm, rrrmm, rrrmmm, here comes the fire truck. Watch out everybody. Get out of the way. Rrrrm, rrrrm, rrrmm.”

“Where’s my present, Mama? I want my present!” Susie's face crinkled up again.

“Here, baby, sit up here in my lap and open your stocking.”

Dot sat down in the chair and picked Susie up and gave her the stocking. Inside there was a great big green lollipop. “Santa didn’t forget! Look, Mama, he gave me a green lollipop!”

Dot kissed the top of Susie’s head. “Breakfast time, Children.”

She spooned oatmeal into three yellow bowls and set them on the table. The children sat down with their presents in front of them and began to eat. When they were done, their mother looked at them. “Now, I have a big surprise for you.”

“What is it, Mama?”

“What is it?”

“Yes, what, Mama, what?”

Dot reached in the little brown bag and pulled out three oranges. She handed one to Molly and one to Davie and one to Susie. “Sunshine, that’s what it is!”

The children laughed and giggled as they peeled their oranges. All of a sudden Molly stopped and said, “Mama, you didn’t get a present. Santa didn’t bring anything for you.”

“Yes, he did,” Dot laughed. “He gave me the three of you!”

The children smiled and gave pieces of orange to their mother. Then they all sang very loud, “Deck the halls with boughs of holly. Fa la la la la. La la. La la.”

Susie smiled at her mother and her brother and sister and opened her mouth and said, “You know what?”

“No, what?”

“This is the bestest Christmas in the whole wide world.”

It was.

Fond of the man who jests at his scars, if you like;
but never believe he is being on the level with you.

Pamela Hansford Johnson.

Pamela Hansford Johnson, Lady Snow (1912-1981) English Writer, poet and literary critic. Her works include This Bed Thy Centre 1935, which was judged shocking, Too Dear for My Possessing 1940, The Unspeakable Skipton 1959, based on the life of Frederick Rolfe, An Error of Judgement 1962, The hatter of Cork Street 1965, [In Cork Street, next to the hatters, is the bookshop run by Cosmo Hines and his once notorious wife, the poet, Dorothy Merlin.] . Her poetry was published under the pseudonym Michael Connelly. Pamela Hansford Johnson married, Lord Charles Percy Snow; Baron Snow of Leicester, b.1905-80, English author and physicist.

Lord Charles Percy Snow, at age 25 a fellow at Christ's College, had an active, varied career, including several important positions in the British government. He served as technical director of the ministry of labor from 1940 to 1944; as civil service commissioner from 1945 to 1960; and as parliamentary secretary to the minister of technology from 1964 to 1966.

As both a literary man and a scientist, Snow was well equipped to write about science and literature;The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, 1959. Snow was noted for his series of 11 related novels known collectively as Strangers and Brothers. The series traces the career of Lewis Eliot from his boyhood in a provincial town, through law school and years as a fellow at Cambridge, to an important government position; Eliot's career parallels that of Snow himself. Although the series has been read as a study of power, or as an analysis of the relationship between science and the community, it is primarily a perceptive and moving delineation of changes in English life during the 20th century.

...a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself...with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud...

a boy

the spit of myself,

with a pink-tipped cigarette

and the violet past of a black eye,

cocky as a bullfinch,

leering all to himself.

with a violet wink,

put his whistle to his lips

and blew

so stridently, - so high, - so exquisitely loud,

my mother was an amazing seamstress, useful presents could even be a winter coat made from her own clothes. One year i particular I remember a pleated skirt in a blackwatch fabric with a matching sash and tam. She expected me to wear the outfit to my first school dance! no other girl had home made clothes, and certainly did not wear green plaid, among the kids I knew the height of fashion was found at Alexander's on Fordham Road- but I wore the outfit with a white ruffle blouse- knee socks and my school shoes- and can you believe it was a hit!. In the sea of tight black skirts on children way too young for black, 'assisted' bras, french twists and pointed toe (ouch) shoes, mine was an outfit unique. The clothes were elevated to a status of 'theme' and with pigyails flying the chaperones and I made jigs the evening dance themes- which was a hidden plus for me because I did not know how to dance anything anyway- and no one else could do a jig either. French twists fell into tangles of shellac, shoes came off and the guys even jigged to the "mashed potato"- but I also remember my exposed knees red, cold and chapped from the long walk home.

• "three tall firemen in their shining helmets,"
• standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs,
• three aunts
• "Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins"
• Aunt Hannah is mentioned three times
• "carol-singing sea"
• the old man taking his "constitution" [i love that word and it brings back memories when we took an evening constitution] has three articles of clothing mentioned - "old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats"
• the "postmen With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet
• Jack starts their caroling off "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three.
• the voice on the other side of the door is described in threes
  • "a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door:
• three of the of the boys repond with three possiblities
  • "Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
  • Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
  • Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said.

• I am one of three sisters and my mother was one of three sisters. I have three children and my youngest has three boys.
• I do like the shape of 3 and jaunty 5 - dislike the shape of 7
• hiked one summer in France, Germany, Switzerland -
• for three years in a row I went to London for Christmas - the year I saw Les Mis... I also saw Aspects...and The Baker's Wife - in fact come to think of it every trip to London I saw three productions if you include the Ballet. -
• love listening to (and secretly singing along with) the three Tenors
• hehehe I do have 3 sets of good China, my grandmother's Blue Willow, an old discontinued Lenex pattern and the wedgewood Strawberry patter
• - ah yes; during my adult life I've had three types of employment, Girl Scout Camp councelor, tought fine needlework and needlepoint in various shops and at a national needlework society event, and for the last 21 years a Real Estate Broker -
• and yes pre-marriage (lets not talk about the marriage although it took 38 years before the divorce) Lets see I worked summers as a waitress in a family type small resturant (interesting he had been a Norweigan sea captain on a square rigged schooner), as a cashier in the local movie theater that opened at 6:00 in the evening in the middle of the feature and then after it played through the film started from the beginning and played in its entirety ~ logic being everyone was and could be late and still see the whole movie - and then as a keypunch operator -
• oh yes I have three swimming medals, two silver and one bronze -
• on three seperate occassions birds flew into my house, oh nothing freaks me out more then fluttering hysterical birds flying in my house awwwrrrrhhhhh -
• the number 3 is the starting number in my home address, my home phone number and the office number -
• and finally it takes three hours to run down to Aransas where the waves come in and in and in and the birds swoop low and I can still pick-up a sand dollar.

"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box."

The Princess Mary 1914 Christmas Box gifts

Christmas Box Available all the year round

dole of the Christmas box'

Meaning and origins of phrases including: A Christmas box - Cherry Ripe

Shop 'Til You Drop at -

1. Marks and Spencers;
2. Harrods;
3. Fortnum & Masons;
4. Hamleys;
5. Liberty's;
6. Harvey Nichols;
7. Burberrys;
8. Selfridges

All that the children could hear was a ringing of bells.
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries,

Bell: Consecration; the motion of the elements; a charm against the powers of destruction. Bells ringing can either be a summons or a warning. Christian Church bells call and encourage the faithful, put evil spirits to flight and quell storms. The sanctus bell announces the presence of Christ at the mass.

Since Christmas is a combination of Christ and Mass the day is inferring the Mass of Christ and so I can see this bit in the story alluding to announcing the presence of Chirst in this Child's holiday in addition to "No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries,..." sounding for all the world as a place where ringing bells would put evil spirits to flight and quell storms.

Thunder is not a Christian symbol but it is among other traditions a Scandinavian and Teutonic symbol that I think translates to the British Isles since the cultures mixed.

Thunder: Thor, the thunder god; Donnar is a storm god; thunder gods are often depicted with red hair; divine anger; the voice of sky gods.

I remember my mother making mince meat cookies- which became my brother's favorite as an adult- and that was his gift from her for years- aside from the delicious cookie, she'd find these unique ways of presenting them- one year her theme was blackwatch plaid- bows, bowers- napkins all designed in a way to hold the maximum number of cookies.

me- i used to like the christmas pudding- it came in some kind of blue can that she'd put a little hole in and then place the entire can in a pot of boiling water- she served it with a lemony sauce- i have no clue what that pudding is- or how to make the sauce, so like her amazing potato salad recipe it is something that is simply The Past.