By Susan Merrell

“Watermelons always remind me of Christmas,” said the young waiter at the café-cum-greengrocers where I was enjoying a coffee.

He’s right.  Watermelons, mangoes, chilled seafood and chardonnay are all the summery pleasures that have evoked Christmas for me now for many decades too.

Yet re-reading Dylan Thomas’ ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales” produced a wave of nostalgia for my Christmas’ past when I was growing up in the valleys that rolled down to the “two-tongued sea” where Thomas spent his childhood.

For Thomas: “It was always snowing at Christmas.” Though it wasn’t.  The snows usually came in January.  We considered it lucky if we had a white Christmas – and occasionally we did.  It was always bitterly cold.

One Christmas it did snow, our family of six, who lived in Cardiff, had planned to drive to the nearby Valleys to spend time with grandparents. While the snow never ceased to fill us children with delight, to the parents it presented problems.

With just a coal fire to provide our warmth at home and then only when someone was there to light it, what was to become of the goldfish while we were away? The goldfish bowl had already half frozen over once before. The fish had survived but leaving them in sub-zero temperatures is not recommended?  There was the question of whether the car would start too. In the Christmas Eve excitement, with my father busy constructing gifts that had been supplied in parts, no one had thought to fill the car with anti freeze – the snow hadn’t been expected.

Nevertheless, intrepidly we carried on with our plans. With the goldfish in a screw-top jar and four shivering children huddled in the back seat under blankets, we crossed our fingers that the car would start. It purred into life and we were off on a journey that usually took an hour. We couldn’t wait. To Aberaman and more presents.

Cardiff is geographically low.  We were headed upward: the industrial valleys of South Wales famous for both their coal and iron-ore deposits are, as the name suggests, between mountains and we had some steep terrain to navigate -like the main street of Pontypridd, where the singer Tom Jones grew up.

It’s so steep that buses used to go around it only getting back onto the gradient at the very top, engines straining until the bus, with its nervous passengers, eventually went over the top. In retrospect, my father should have done likewise but having driven up this street many times before he was blasé and went straight up the middle.

We got half way. But the icy road afforded no traction whatsoever. The car slid sideways, it made two yards forward then three back. In the back, we squealed with delight and laughed so hard. This Christmas was shaping up to be the best ever. In the front my mother sat completely speechless while my usually abstemious father spoke words he shouldn’t have done on the Lord’s birthday.

Eventually reaching the top and flat ground everyone in the front seat heaved a collective sigh of relief while a voice in the back piped up:

“That was great, Dad. Can we do it again?

Dylan Thomas wrote: “There are always Uncles at Christmas.” And so there were.  My father was one of eight children. My favourite was my Uncle Cyril.

Cyril drank alcohol – in itself not unusual. Except in Wales there was a huge teetotal demographic grace of the non-conformist religion that had gripped the country in the previous century. Our family members went from the sublime to the ridiculous jumping from total abstinence to absolute excess and nothing in between

One Christmas night, after us children had gone to bed, there was a knock at our front door in Cardiff. It was Cyril. With neither party having a telephone, he had driven an hour from Penrhiwceiber (also in the valleys) where my paternal grandparents lived because an impromptu party had started that Cyril thought would be improper without his brother Royston and family.

That he had been drinking all day and drove a Mini Minor didn’t pose any problems for him. Four children were bundled into the back of the car in dressing gowns while the adults piled into the front. Seven is a lot of people to squeeze into a Mini Minor but Cyril would brook no arguments. We were going to Penrhiwceiber come hell or high water.

We, in the back, especially enjoyed the moment when the car became airborne as Cyril took it over a median strip in Cardiff’s Civic centre and we loved it when Cyril drove around roundabouts until we were giddy. Uncle Cyril was such good fun. I could never work out why he changed so much come morning.

When we arrived, the party was in full swing.

“Say, hello to your Aunty Blodwen,” my father said as I stepped in the front door. Although I’d never seen her before, apparently we were related. And there were more – a lot more – all were aunts, uncles or cousins.

“Doesn’t she look like her mother?” someone would comment before the hugging and kissing would ensue.

When the enthusiastic embraces became too much I’d take refuge on my Granddad’s knee, although I had to fight off my siblings and cousins. We all loved our Granddad. He was such a gentle, softly-spoken man, it’s difficult to fathom that he and his formidable, four-foot-ten-inch wife, my grandmother, were largely responsible for most of the rowdy lot there assembled.

We ate mince pies and drank home-made small beer, a soft drink similar to ginger beer made from stinging nettles with unstable characteristics that often saw bottles exploding. I was always sorry that I was never there when that happened.

There was skulduggery in the scullery. No children were allowed in there. It was where the sinners stashed their hard liquor. Dylan Thomas talks of the drinking of ‘parsnip wine’, I suspect some innocent vegetables had been similarly employed to produce that night’s hooch.

Everyone stood to do their item that night. Some sang, some recited poetry we all sang carols. “

“Always on Christmas night there was music” for Dylan Thomas and our family was no different

This Christmas I will spend with newer members of my family, and although in different climes, I hope that these occasions will inspire someone maybe in forty years time when they smell a mango or taste a glass of ice-cold pinot grigio to say “Remember the Christmas when…”