Relevant Background | Summary | Themes | Style

A Christmas Childhood - Patrick Kavanagh [1904-1967]

Relevant Background

• Patrick Kavanagh was born on a farm in Co. Monaghan. His family farmhouse was located in hilly countryside, near a bog.
• He lived in a country area known as the townland of Mucker. He grew up as part of a community and knew his neighbours well. They included the Cassidys, Lennons and Callans referred to in this poem.
• The Kavanaghs were small farmers who milked cows, grew their own potatoes, saved their own hay and straw, had a little orchard and a yard with some outhouses for farm activities—as indicated in this poem.
• His family were Catholic. Sunday mass and Christmas were important events in his family life, as shown in this poem. In this poem, Kavanagh’s imagination pictured parts of his home area in terms of the Christmas story told in the bible.
• Kavanagh only had primary school education. After his childhood, he became an apprentice shoemaker to his father and worked on the family farm.
• Kavanagh started writing poetry in his teens while continuing his farm duties.
• As a teenager and adult, Kavanagh didn’t fit in with farm life. In his poetry, he sometimes looked back on childhood as a marvellous and happy period of his life. He had an active childhood imagination and that enriched his early years.
• In his adult life, Kavanagh left the farm and pursued a writing career as a journalist, novelist, lecturer and poet.

Summary

In the first section, Kavanagh recalls a series of random childhood experiences. He remembers, the white coat of frost on the potato pits in the yard, the humming sound of fence wire in the wind, the corridor between the ricks [mounds] of hay and straw, the red apples of the orchard that reminded him of Christmas ornaments, clay, hoof prints of cattle and scenes from the ditches. He compares the world to Eve, tempting him with knowledge to leave his childhood which was like the Garden of Eden.

In the second section, Kavanagh recalls his father playing the small accordion at his gate, probably on Christmas morning. Kavanagh recalls how he linked symbols of Christmas to the scene around the farmyard and farmhouse: the star in the east, the nativity stable, the three wise men and the Virgin Mary.
The poet remembers hastily putting on his trousers upon hearing his father playing music at the gate. It is a magical moment. He notices neighbours on the way to Mass, passing his farm gate and complimenting his father’s playing. He remembers someone using the bellows to light the open fire in the kitchen, creating a sad, longing sound. His mother milks the cows. Meanwhile the shy young Kavanagh, wearing his new coat, observes the scene from the doorway. He makes six notches on the doorpost with his Christmas present, the new penknife. This fact informs us that he had turned six when this childhood scene happened.

Themes

• Memories of a happy childhood
  Kavanagh suggests that his childhood was one long Christmas. He remembers happy music and farm activities fondly. The fence, his mothers milking and his father’s melodeon all provided happy music. He repeats the word ‘wonderful’ to praise his childhood. The boy gazes in wonder at the scene and links his homestead to the story of the Nativity, through his very active imagination.
• The beauty of nature
  Kavanagh portrays the beauty of everyday sights of nature from the potato-pits to the potholes on the track. Normally these might be considered ugly, but Kavanagh sees them as wonderful. The ice on pot-holes is attractively ‘wafer-thin’. It provides an appealing crunching sound. He portrays the cold dawn as beautiful with its ‘winking glitter’. He describes a common stone in a ditch as ‘a beauty that the world did not touch’. A water-hen screeches in the background.
• Knowledge has a price
  The knowledge that comes with growing up casts off the imagination.
  The wonderful imagination of childhood fades away as we acquire adult knowledge. Kavanagh compares the knowing world to Eve, and himself to Adam as she tempted him to leave the wonders of childhood.
• Religion in everyday life
  The light that shines through a gap between the ricks is ‘a hole in Heaven’s gable’. Adult knowledge is Eve from the Garden of Eden. Three whin bushes become the Three Wise Men on the crest of a hill. The boy Kavanagh places a handwritten prayer on a statue of the Blessed Virgin. Neighbours walk to Mass. The thin ice is compared to communion wafers.
• Family
  The poem portrays the Kavanaghs as a close-knit family, with each member playing a unique role. The mother milks, the father celebrates and creates a musical atmosphere of happiness, the boy plays with his present and gazes in wonder. The family have prepared carefully for winter as shown by the potato pits and the ricks of hay and straw. Childhood is happy, an indication of a united family. Music unites them all.

Style

Comparison: Kavanagh compares his farm environment to aspects of the Christmas story. Three whin bushes are the ‘Three Wise Kings’.
Contrast: Kavanagh contrasts adult life to childhood happiness. Adult life is mortal and is defined by the image: ‘death the germ within it’. Childhood is immortal. The child believes the stars dance to his father’s music.
Metaphor: Kavanagh compares the world of adult responsibility and knowledge to Eve from the Garden of Eden. Happy childhood is compared to a ‘gay garden’.
Simile: Kavanagh compares a prayer to a flower: ‘a prayer like a white rose’.
Personification: Stars ‘danced’. ‘His melodeon called’ and can ‘talk’. Whin bushes are ‘Kings’.
Symbol: Kavanagh remembers his sixth Christmas, but Christmas is also used as a symbol of his happy, amazing childhood. ‘Clay’ is a symbol of adult rural life.
The apple is a symbol of knowledge that spoiled the happiness of childhood.
Tone: The tone is mainly delighted or very happy [a euphoric tone]. There is a feeling of amazement in many lines. There is also a heavy, sombre tone where the poet refers to death as a germ that grew within clay. At one point the tone is regretful: ‘wistfully twisted the bellows’. Many lines show pride.
Alliteration [consonant repetition at beginning of words]: There are many examples, such as ‘paling post’ and ‘gay garden’. The repeated ‘b’ in ‘big blade’ emphasises the child’s view of the new penknife. The most striking alliteration is ‘m’. ‘M’ is associated with the two main words of the poem, ‘music’ and ‘magic’. Note the alliteration of five ‘m’s in ‘my mother made the music of milking’ and the four ‘m’s in ‘melodeon, my mother milked’ etc. ‘M’ captures the sound of the melodeon or small accordion better than any other letter of the alphabet.
Assonance [vowel repetition]: There are numerous examples like the ‘i’ in line one and the ‘o’ in line twenty-five. Assonance creates music that strengthens the beauty of the described scenes of the poem.
Onomatopoeia: In line thirty-two, the words selected to describe the bellows imitate the wheezy sound of air as it is squeezed out of the bellows: ‘wistfully twisted’. Note also the word ‘crunched’, which actually sounds like walking on ice.
Repetition: There are five clear references to music. Images of light and beauty are also repeated.
Rhetorical question: ‘Can’t he make it talk’.