The Book Shelf

Saturday, December 17th   3:30pm 

Taff Roberts to read "A Child's Christmas in Wales" at The Book Shelf 

Taff Roberts first read Dylan Thomas' story "A Child's Christmas in Wales" to an audience while aboard a 65-foot schooner in a Rhode Island harbor in 1975.  He has been reading the nostalgic Christmas story to the public every year since.

Thomas' childhood memories of the windswept coastal town of Swansea in south Wales remind Roberts of his own Christmases growing up in the small costal fishing village of Arthog, Wales.

Thomas' tale of family and friends gathering, playing games and caroling, and of uncles with bellies so stuffed with good food they would unbutton their waistcoats and fall asleep in front of the fire, is not unlike Roberts' bygone Christmases.

Roberts, 57, recalled Christmas at his Aunt Dora's house, which was hot from all the cooking and "filled with turkeys and tinsel and laughter."

"It was a time before television, so we had to create our own fun," he said.

When Roberts sailed to the United States aboard a 32-foot sailboat in 1974, he'd never heard of Dylan Thomas. Then a friend began reciting Thomas poetry, and Roberts was moved by Thomas' use of imagery. In 1975, a friend gave him a copy of "A Child's Christmas in Wales."

Though another friend later gave him a handsome hard-bound copy of the book, Roberts prefers his 1975 copy - tattered, missing its cover, bound and re-bound with masking tape and browned with age.

Throughout the years, Roberts has read on sailboats, in libraries, from pulpits in churches and in an old barn with no heat on a bird sanctuary in Middletown, R.I., where nearly 75 people came dressed in their winter coats and huddled together to listen to Roberts read the tale.

Each time, he gets something different out of it.

Roberts pointed out a part in the story where Thomas describes receiving "useful" Christmas gifts such as a

"little crocheted nose bag" from an aunt.

Last year a woman brought her two children to the reading and gave Roberts a crocheted nose bag of his own.

Roberts beamed as he pulled the red and white beak-like triangle from his desk drawer. He chuckled as he tied the strings behind his head.

"What is a nose bag for? Keeping your nose warm!" he said.

"A Child's Christmas in Wales" is not just for young people. "I know a woman in her 80s that won't miss a reading because it re-creates her Christmas," Roberts said.

Roberts said he reads the same tale year after year because "it brings the joy of Christmas and what Christmas should be about: celebrating together and enjoying each other's company."

He said he believes Christmases in the 1950s were richer than today's because the focus was on people, but he believes it's still possible to regain that spirit.

"We can recreate it by finding the joy in people."