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| Upper Turkeyfoot on a colder, more traditional, Christmas. |
"Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle
played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and
another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in
the little house. Auntie 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; and then everybody laughed
again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my
bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the
unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in
the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear
the music rising from them up the long, steady falling
night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some
words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept."
—last lines in the Dylan Thomas classic,
