Helen Keller at Christmas

A dispatch from bewilderness

In 1891, when Helen Keller was 19 months old, she contracted a high fever that left her deaf, blind, and unable to learn to speak. Her first six Christmases had been dark silent days, like all days were for her. In her seventh year, light arrived in the form of her teacher, Anne Sullivan, whom Helen called Teacher. So did words, tapped onto hands.

That’s how the first Christmas Helen could comprehend took place in her seventh year, though she could not see it or hear it, of course. Through tapping, she discovered that trees “grew” in parlors in December.

On Christmas Eve, she was invited to a party and was happy children played with her. Her mother wept and gave thanks. Helen woke her family the next morning, frantically spelling, “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!”

Helen learned, too, the concept of gifts. She was invited to several more parties with other children. Anne Sullivan wrote, “At a party at the local school, Helen was given the honor of distributing gifts. After handing them out, she noticed that one little girl, Nellie, received fewer gifts than the others. She signed to Teacher: “I will give Nellie mug.”

Anne later wrote, “She had chosen to give the gift which pleased her most to a girl she barely knew. Years later, Helen recalled, though she was “blind, deaf and speechless” (her description), she loved collecting and preparing “orange and lemon peel, citron, nuts, apples, currants and raisins” to make fruitcakes with the family at Christmastime. To her, these cakes were “miracles.”

Helen wrote, “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched—they must be felt with the heart.” We might all remember that on holy days—and every day—of this and every year.

Although some of her quotes, when taken out of context, could work well on Hallmark cards, in context Helen was a firebrand who fought tirelessly to gain for women the right to vote.

Fyi, although the Equal Rights Amendment was first proposed in Congress over 100 years ago, it has still not been ratified.

These are the unratified words: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”