A Child's Christmas

Available for over a year

Drawing on an iconic recording of Dylan Thomas reading his tale A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Cerys Matthews digs into the archive to discover those other writers and poets - both the wide-eyed and the cynical - who have been inspired to write Christmas through the eyes of a child. From Raymond Briggs and Judith Kerr, to Dylan Thomas and CS Lewis, time-travelling back to a childhood Christmas is a strange, nostalgic drug. Its rituals, sounds, smells and emotions become a lens through which to explore pure wonder but also more thorny issues of loneliness, grief and coming-of-age. Cerys talks to author Katherine Rundell who says, “For children, Christmas has such a surfeit of magic and limitless possibility. For the adult you see it from the other side – you see how Christmas is made – but you never really get to experience it again as something miraculous. That is, unless you conjure it once again by catching it in your text.” Writer and actor Mark Gatiss describes how Christmas tales can also be a way to carry our child heroes to the edge of the adult world, a place of peril, haunted by the spectres of mid-winter. Think of Susan Cooper’s eerie cult classic, The Dark is Rising and John Mansfield’s The Box of Delights. In this parallel other Christmas, Cerys also finds themes of entrapment within family and religion and she talks to the author Lemn Sissay about his experience of writing Christmas through the eyes of the orphaned or the fostered child. ‘To really be a child without a family at Christmas is perhaps the most painful story of all,’ he says. Including reference to: Dylan Thomas - A Child's Christmas in Wales Hans Christien Andersen - The Little Match Girl and The Snow Queen Raymond Briggs - The Snowman Clement Clarke Moore - The Night Before Christmas Jacqueline Wilson - Tracy Beaker's Christmas Katherine Rundell - One Christmas Wish The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading - Sam Leith Judith Kerr - Mog's Christmas Charles Causley - Shepherds' Song Louisa May Alcott - Little Women John Agard - If Only I Could Take a Snowflake Home Carol Ann Duffy - Christmas Eve CS Lewis - The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe John Masefield - The Box of Delights Susan Cooper - The Dark is Rising Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol Readers: Jesse, Aurora, Ori, Lochan, Ionas, Elba With music by The Enchanted Cinema Produced by Sarah Cuddon A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4