Christmas in Wales.
How idyllic that sounds! A fabulous season spent in a land of enchantment.
That’s the way the poet Dylan Thomas described his native habitat in 1955 when he wrote “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.”
As one critic sees it, “Thomas recreates the nostalgic magic of a childhood Christmas when everything was brighter and better.”
As the poet recalled the time, “It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas.”
That weather helped create an aura of mystery for Thomas but perhaps he remembered it with advantages.
My own Christmas in Wales was not like that. No snow fell. I was no longer a child, and I remained far from sharing the imagination of a poet.
Yes, the beauty of the countryside impressed itself on me. From a hill on a clear day, I could look to the north and catch a glimpse of the Irish Sea. To the west, I was awed by Mt. Snowdon rising above the plains.
Nearby flowed the River Clwyd, and not far from the house where I stayed, sheep grazed peacefully. .
Another poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, had seen the same landscape long before, and had written: “Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,/All the air things wear that build this world of Wales.”
Offsetting this beauty for me, however, were the discontents of absence. In a letter to my mother on December 24, 1963, I wrote (not too gracefully): “Adjustment to an uncongenial style of living, a good deal of confinement, all go to account for this finding life difficult.”
For a year, I lived in a castle-like house belonging to the English Jesuits near the town of St. Asaph. The place was isolated from population centers because, on their legally-allowed return to Britain in the 19th century after long years of exile, the Jesuits wanted to keep a low profile.
I found this isolation difficult to bear, and the lifestyle of my English colleagues did not always sit well with me. Christmas served to bring out some of these feelings.
My purpose for being there was to complete the final stage of my spiritual apprenticeship. This was an austere enterprise, involving none of the usual novelty and variety of travel abroad.
On many mornings, I would look out into a courtyard hoping that the Royal Mail truck would soon arrive with a letter for me. And, all that year, I did not learn a single word of the Welsh language.
The warmth and kindness of some of my colleagues could not make me forget home Christmases. I remember promising myself never to live in such isolation again.
During that Christmas season of 1963, I felt particularly bereft because of President Kennedy’s assassination a few weeks previously. In the days following the event, colleagues from around the world had rallied around us Americans, but it was still difficult to find any consolation for such a loss.
In a letter to my mother on December 15th, I had described my anguish. “This news rocked me for a few days,” I wrote, “and even now, I still feel bursts of sadness and regret sometimes.”
I added that she could not know “the affection people had for him over here.” We had been permitted (by way of exception) to watch television, and my companions grieved with me.
Perhaps the experience of being abroad explains why my most frequent dreams even now involve finding myself far from home with uncertain prospects of getting back.
These fantasies have value for me because they reveal thoughts and feelings otherwise suppressed. As the Swiss psychologist Jung says, “The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul.”
More than four decades after the experience of first being an ocean away from home, I look forward to being once again at home with family and friends in the warmth of Christmas.
Two realities temper my joyous feelings, however.
I feel continued anxiety about what has been happening to our country, our homeland. We are still at war; our political leadership is held in contempt; the planet itself is in peril. It is difficult to be optimistic.
The second concern is related to the first. Even in our country, flowing with wealth, people without homes can be counted in the hundreds of thousands, if not more.
In Dafur, in Iraq, in Congo and elsewhere, millions wander in search of basic shelter. According to St. Luke, the child at the center of the Christmas celebration and his parents were homeless as well.
These sober thoughts, however, should not be allowed to take away the joy that many of us feel at Christmas. “Joy to the World” says the carol.
Seekers after light can, without scruple, open themselves to let this joy flow in and gladly place a greater value on their own lives and on those whom they love.
Richard Griffin