[Nfb-krafters-korner] Christmas in the Dark, by Helen Keller

[Cathy Flesher]

*The Ladies' Home Journal, December, 1906



Christmas in the Dark, by Helen Keller

When I was a little girl I spent the Christmas holidays one year at the
Perkins Institution for the Blind. Some of the children, whose homes were
far away, or who had no homes, had remained at the school. I have never
known a merrier Christmas than that.

 

I hear some one ask: "What pleasure can Christmas hold for children who
cannot see their gifts or the sparkling tree or the ruddy smile of Santa
Claus? "The question would be answered if you had seen that Christmas of the
blind children. The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has
not Christmas in his heart. We sightless children had the best of eyes that
day in our hearts and in our finger-tips. We were glad from the child's
necessity of being happy. The blind who have outgrown the child's perpetual
joy can be children again on Christmas Day and celebrate in the midst of
them who pipe and dance and sing a new song!

 

For ten days before the holiday I was never still a single moment. I would
be one of the party that went Christmasing. I laid my hands on everything
that offered itself in the shops, and insisted on buying whatever I touched,
until my teacher's eyes could not follow my fingers. How she ever kept me
within the bounds of the fitness of things, maintained the scale of values,
and overtook the caprices of my fancy, is matter of amazement. To the
prettiest doll I would adhere a moment, then discover a still prettier one,
and by decision the more perplex her and myself. At last the presents were
selected and brought home.

 

Next, a great Christmas tree, a cedar which towered above my head, was
brought to the house where the children lived and planted in the middle of
the parlour. Preparation kept'. us busy for a week. I helped to hang wreaths
of holly in the windows and over pictures, and had my share in trimming the
tree. I ascended and descended continually on the ladder to tie on little
balls, apples, oranges, cornucopias, strings of popcorn and festoons of
tinsel. Then we attached the little tapers which should set the tree aglow.
Last came the gifts. As we placed one and then another, it became more and
more difficult for my fingers to thread their way in and out between the
candles, the dangling balls, and the swinging loops of corn and tinsel, to
find a secure position for the gifts. It seemed as if the green,
sweet-scented branches must break with the burden of love-offerings heaped
upon them, and soon the higher branches did begin to bend alarmingly with
each heavier bundle, "like the cliff-swallow's nest, most like to fall when
fullest."

 

One of the last gifts I hung in the midst of the thick branches was a most
unseasonable and incongruous exotic -- a toy cocoanut palm with a monkey,
which had movable limbs, and which at the pressure of a spring would run up
and slide down with a tiny cocoanut upon his head. Behold the miracle of
toyland, a palm grafted upon a cedar! What matters botany? When a little
girl wants anything to happen at Christmas, it happens and she is content.

 

Finally the tree was trimmed. Stars and crescents sparkled from branch to
branch beneath my fingers, and farther up a large silver moon jostled the
sun and stars. At the very top an angel with spread wings looked down on
this wondrous, twinkling world -- the child's Christmas world complete! But
I think the stupendous view must have made him a little dizzy, for he kept
turning slantwise and crosswise and anywise but the way a Christmas angel
should float over a Christmas tree.

 

My teacher and the motherly lady who was matron in that house were children
themselves; it really seemed as if there could not be a grave, experienced
grown-up in the world. We admonished each other not to let fall a whisper of
the mysteries that awaited the blind children, and for once I kept the whole
matter at a higher value than a state secret.

 

On Christmas Eve I went to bed early, only to hop up many times to rearrange
some package, to which I remembered I had not given the finishing touches,
and to use all my powers of persuasion with the unruly angel whom I
invariably found in a reprehensible position.

 

Long before any one else was downstairs on Christmas morning, I took my last
touch-look at the tree, and lo! the angel was correctly balanced, looking
down in serene poise on the brilliant world below him. I suspected that
Santa Claus had passed that way, and that under his discipline the angel,
probably only a demi-angel, had been released from his sublunary
infirmities. I turned to go, quite satisfied, when I discovered that Sadie's
doll had shut her eyes on all the splendour that shone about her! "This will
never do," I said -- "sleeping at this time!" I poked her vigorously, until
she winked, and finally, to show she was really awake, kicked Jupiter in the
side, which disturbed the starry universe. But I had the planets in their
orbits again before it was time for them to shine on the children.

 

After a hurried breakfast the blind children were permitted to enter the
parlour and pass their hands over the tree. They knew instantly, without
eyes, what a marvellous tree it was, filled with the good smells of June,
filled with the songs of birds that had southward flown, filled with fruit
that at the slightest touch tumbled into their laps. I felt them shout, I
felt them dance up and down, and we all crowded about and hugged each other
in rapture.

 

I distributed all the gifts myself and felt the gestures of delight as the
children opened them. Very pretty gifts they were, well suited to sightless
children. No disappointing picture-books, or paint-boxes, or kaleidoscopes,
or games that require the use of sight. But there were many toys wonderful
to handle, dolls, both boys and girls, including a real baby doll with a
bottle in its mouth; chairs, tables, sideboards, and china sets, pincushions
and work-baskets, little cases containing self-threading needles that the
blind can use, sweet-scented handkerchiefs, pretty things to wear, and
dainty ornaments that render children fair to look upon. Blind children, who
cannot see, love to make themselves pretty for others to see.

 

There were animals, too, fierce lions and tigers, which proved that
appearances are most deceptive, for when one took their heads off one found
them full of sweet things. One girl had a bear that danced and growled
whenever she wound a key somewhere in the region of its neck. Another had a
cow that mooed when she turned its head.

 

The older children received books in raised 'print, not mournful, religious
books, such as some good people see fit to choose for the sightless, but
pleasant ones like "Undine," or Hawthorne's "Twice-Told Tales," or "The
Story of Patsy," or "Alice in Wonderland." Fairy tales, novels, essays,
books of travel and history, and magazines well filled with news of the
world and gossipy articles are thumbed by the blind until the raised letters
are worn down. Books of gloomy, depressing character, and many that are full
of dry wisdom and no doubt very good for our morals, are likely to repose on
the top shelf until the dust takes possession of them. The blind are
rendered by their very affliction keenly alive to what is joyous and
diverting. Their books are necessarily few, and most of them ought to be
delightful and entertaining.

 

After we had touched our presents to our hearts' content we romped and
frolicked as long as the little ones could go, and longer. If you had looked
in on our unlagging merriment and had never seen blind children at play
before, you might have been surprised that in our wildest gyrations we did
not run into the tree, or knock over a chair, or fall into the fire that
burned on the hearth. I think, we must have looked like any other group of
merry children. You would have learned that the way to make the blind happy
at Christmas, and all the time, is to treat them as far as possible like
other persons. They do not like to be continually reminded of their
blindness, set aside and neglected, or even waited on too much.

 

Had you been our guest you would have received a gift from the sightless,
for they have one precious gift for the world. In their misfortune they are
often happy, and in that they give an inspiring challenge to those who see.
Shall any seeing man dare to be sad at Christmas or permit a little child to
be other than merry and light-hearted? What can excuse the seeing from the
duty and privilege of happiness while the blind child joins so merrily in
the jubilee?

 

"Tiny Tim" was glad to be at church on Christmas because he thought the
sight of him might remind folk who it was that gave the lame power to walk.
Even so the blind may remind their seeing brethren who it was that opened
the blinded eyes, unstopped the deaf cars, gave health to the sick, and
knowledge to the ignorant, and declared that mightier things even than these
shall be fulfilled. All the afflicted who keep the blessed day compel the
affectionate thought that He abides with us yet.

 

The legend tells that when Jesus was born the sun danced in the sky, the
aged trees straightened themselves and put on leaves and sent forth the
fragrance of blossoms once more. These are the symbols of what takes place
in our hearts when the Christ- Child is born anew each year. Blessed by the
Christmas sunshine, our natures, perhaps long leafless, bring forth new
love, new kindness, new mercy, new compassion. As the birth of Jesus was the
beginning of the Christian life, so the unselfish joy at Christmas shall
start the spirit that is to rule the new year.

Micheal A. Hudson
Museum Director
American Printing House for the Blind

 

 

 

 

Have a great day!!

Cathy F