Very gay they were with snow and sleigh-bells, holly-boughs, and garlands, below, and Christmas sunshine in the winter sky above. All faces shone, all voices had a cheery ring, and everybody stepped briskly on errands of good-will.
Louisa May Alcott, "Seamstress," Work: A Story of Experience. 1873
Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.
Norman Vincent Peale
Christmas is a time when you get homesick — even when you're home.
He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.
I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
Christmas is the gentlest, loveliest festival of the revolving year — and yet, for all that, when it speaks, its voice has strong authority.
The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.
One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don't clean it up too quickly.
Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!
Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers
O child. it is only for thirty-six hours of the three hundred and sixty-five days, that all people remember that they are all brothers and sisters, and those are the hours that we call, therefore, Christmas eve and Christmas day.
Edward E. Hale, "Christmas Waits in Boston," If, Yes, and Perhaps: Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations, With Some Bits of Fact. 1868 [Originally written for the Boston Daily Advertiser, 1867, Hale recalling a scrap of Mr. Ingham's memoirs. —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]
There has been only one Christmas — the rest are anniversaries.
'Twas Christmas broach'd the mightiest ale;
'Twas Christmas told the merriest tale;
A Christmas gambol oft could cheer
The poor man's heart through half the year.
Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we're here for something else besides ourselves.
Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
May Peace be your gift at Christmas and your blessing all year through!
I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall.
Larry Wilde, The Merry Book of Christmas
Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.
Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.
Isn't it funny that at Christmas something in you gets so lonely for — I don't know what exactly, but it's something that you don't mind so much not having at other times.
At Christmas, all roads lead home.
Instead of being a time of unusual behavior, Christmas is perhaps the only time in the year when people can obey their natural impulses and express their true sentiments without feeling self-conscious and, perhaps, foolish. Christmas, in short, is about the only chance a man has to be himself.
Francis C. Farley
It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.
For centuries men have kept an appointment with Christmas. Christmas means fellowship, feasting, giving and receiving, a time of good cheer, home.
W.J. Ronald Tucker
Christmas is forever, not for just one day,
for loving, sharing, giving, are not to put away
like bells and lights and tinsel, in some box upon a shelf.
The good you do for others is good you do yourself.
Norman Wesley Brooks (1923–2002), “Let Every Day Be Christmas,” 1976 — click for full poem
Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their kids pay for it.
Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love!
Hamilton Wright Mabie
Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.
Author unknown, attributed to a 7-year-old named Bobby
When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?
I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.
Christmas is the day that holds all time together.
From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it.
In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukka" and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy Hanukka!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!"
Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
Remember
This December,
That love weighs more than gold!
Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon
I sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day. We try to crowd into it the long arrears of kindliness and humanity of the whole year. As for me, I like to take my Christmas a little at a time, all through the year. And thus I drift along into the holidays — let them overtake me unexpectedly — waking up some fine morning and suddenly saying to myself: "Why, this is Christmas Day!"
A Christmas candle is a lovely thing;
It makes no noise at all,
But softly gives itself away.
Christmas is not as much about opening our presents as opening our hearts.
And, so, Christmas comes to bless us!
Comes to teach us how to find
The joy of giving happiness
And the joy of being kind.
Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "There Will Always Be a Christmas" (1940s)
"It came without ribbons! It came without tags! It came without packages, boxes or bags. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! "Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas. perhaps. means a little bit more!"
Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
A cup of ale,
A merry tale
Of days of olden time,
And Christmas good cheer
To wind up the year
With glad frolic, and fun, and glee.
Henry James Slack (1818–1896), "Winter's Song," The Ministry of the Beautiful. 1850 [Conversation XI: A Winter Landscape —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]
Perhaps the best Yuletide decoration is being wreathed in smiles.
Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer. Who'd have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously?
Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes
Only in souls the Christ is brought to birth,
And there He lives and dies.
For the spirit of Christmas fulfils the greatest hunger of mankind.
Loring A. Schuler
There is one more good thing about Winter—he brings Christmas. Through the bleak December the thought of the coming festival is pleasant—like the reflection of a fire on our faces. Christmas-day is the pleasantest day in the whole year. On that day we think tenderly of distant friends; we strive to forgive injuries—to close accounts with ourselves and the world—to begin the new year with a white leaf, and a trust that the chapter of life about to be written will contain more notable entries, a fairer sprinkling of good actions, fewer erasures made in blushes, and fewer ugly blots than some of the earlier ones. And to make Christmas perfect, the ground should be covered and the trees draped with snow; the bleak world outside should make us enjoy all the more keenly the comforts we possess; and above all, it should make us remember the poor and the needy; for a charitable deed is the best close of any chapter of our lives, and the best promise, too, for the record about to be begun.
Alexander Smith, "Winter," 1863
Mistletoe and gleaming holly,
Symbols of a blessed day.
Louisa May Alcott, "Merry Christmas," in The Horn of Plenty. 1876
This is the message of Christmas: We are never alone.
Tradition: sit with husband in a room lit only by tree lights and remember that our blessings outnumber the lights. Happy Christmas to all.
At Christmas play and make good cheer,
For Christmas comes but once a year
Christmas is for children. But it is for grown-ups too. Even if it is a headache, a chore, and nightmare, it is a period of necessary defrosting of chill and hide-bound hearts.
Lenora Mattingly Weber
Sing hey! Sing hey!
For Christmas Day;
Twine mistletoe and holly.
For a friendship glows
In winter snows,
And so let's all be jolly!
To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year.
E.B. White, "The Distant Music of the Hounds," The Second Tree from the Corner. 1954
Christmas is coming; it is almost here!
With Santa and presents, good will and cheer!
Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "Christmas" (1940s)
Oh, for the good old days when people would stop Christmas shopping when they ran out of money.
I can understand people simply fleeing the mountainous effort Christmas has become. but there are always a few saving graces and finally they make up for all the bother and distress.
It is the Christmas time:
And up and down 'twixt heaven and earth,
In glorious grief and solemn mirth,
The shining angels climb.
Dinah Maria Mulock
Fail not to call to mind, in the course of the twenty-fifth of this month, that the Divinest Heart that ever walked the earth was born on that day; and then smile and enjoy yourselves for the rest of it; for mirth is also of Heaven's making.
Whose heart doth hold the Christmas glow
Hath little need of Mistletoe;
Who bears a smiling grace of mien
Need waste no time on wreaths of green;
Whose lips have words of comfort spread
Needs not the holly-berries red—
His very presence scatters wide
The spirit of the Christmastide.
John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922), "The Christmas Spirit" (December Twenty-fourth), The Cheery Way: A Bit of Verse For Every Day. 1920
The perfect Christmas tree? All Christmas trees are perfect!
Charles N. Barnard
Great little One! whose all-embracing birth
Lifts Earth to Heaven, stoops Heaven to Earth.
I do like Christmas on the whole. In its clumsy way, it does approach Peace and Goodwill. But it is clumsier every year.
At Christmas
A man is at his finest towards the finish of the year;
He is almost what he should be when the Christmas season's here;
Then he's thinking more of others than he's thought the months before,
And the laughter of his children is a joy worth toiling for.
He is less a selfish creature than at any other time;
When the Christmas spirit rules him he comes close to the sublime.
Christmas is the season when you buy this year's gifts with next year's money.
The Church does not superstitiously observe days, merely as days, but as memorials of important facts. Christmas might be kept as well upon one day of the year as another; but there should be a stated day for commemorating the birth of our Saviour, because there is danger that what may be done on any day, will be neglected.
As long as we know in our hearts what Christmas ought to be, Christmas is.
When we recall Christmas past, we usually find that the simplest things — not the great occasions — give off the greatest glow of happiness.
[I]t is the one season of the year when we can lay aside all gnawing worry, indulge in sentiment without censure, assume the carefree faith of childhood, and just plain "have fun." Whether they call it Yuletide, Noel, Weinachten, or Christmas, people around the earth thirst for its refreshment as the desert traveller for the oasis.
Roses are reddish
Violets are bluish
If it weren't for Christmas
We'd all be Jewish.
Christmas! The very word brings joy to our hearts. No matter how we may dread the rush, the long Christmas lists for gifts and cards to be bought and given — when Christmas Day comes there is still the same warm feeling we had as children, the same warmth that enfolds our hearts and our homes.
Joan Winmill Brown
May you have the gladness of Christmas which is hope;
The spirit of Christmas which is peace;
The heart of Christmas which is love.
Ada V. Hendricks
The best Christmas trees come very close to exceeding nature.
What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.
Be merry all, be merry all,
With holly dress the festive hall;
Prepare the song, the feast, the ball,
To welcome merry Christmas.
William Robert Spencer
The glad greeting of Merry Christmas is a pledge of brotherhood. We are one great family. No wonder that Christmas is above all others the familyi day. A transfigured atmosphere of peace and love breathes around the home. The gifts and tenders of affection cement more closely the sacred ties of family life. The peace and love of this hallowed time shines like a halo around us; it goes with us as we hasten through the crowded streets; it brightens and cheers those we meet. There are no strangers on Christmas Day.
J.T. Driscoll, "The Message of Christmas," in The Catholic World. December 1904 [a little altered —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]
The Christmas season has come to mean the period when the public plays Santa Claus to the merchants.
John Andrew Holmes
If "ifs" and "buts" were candy and nuts, wouldn't it be a Merry Christmas?
Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.
Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The message of Christmas is that the visible material world is bound to the invisible spiritual world.
Were I a philosopher, I should write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life need to be taken seriously, and that Christmas Day in the company of children is one of the few occasions on which men become entirely alive.
Mankind is a great, an immense family. This is proved by what we feel in our hearts at Christmas.
Pope John XXIII
I love the Christmas-tide, and yet,
I notice this, each year I live;
I always like the gifts I get,
But how I love the gifts I give!
'Tis blessed to bestow, and yet,
Could we bestow the gifts we get,
And keep the ones we give away,
How happy were our Christmas day!
There is a remarkable breakdown of taste and intelligence at Christmastime. Mature, responsible grown men wear neckties made of holly leaves and drink alcoholic beverages with raw egg yolks and cottage cheese in them.
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.
Calvin Coolidge, 1927
No matter how carefully you stored the lights last year, they will be snarled again this Christmas.
Except the Christ be born again tonight
In dreams of all men, saints and sons of shame,
The world will never see his kingdom bright.
Like snowflakes, my Christmas memories gather and dance — each beautiful, unique and too soon gone.
When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow, we hear sweet voices ringing from lands of long ago, and etched on vacant places are half-forgotten faces of friends we used to cherish, and loves we used to know.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Santa Claus is believing in something greater, believing in something magical.
Vanessa Grimaldi, on The Bachelor. season 21, episode 12, filmed November 2016
I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time.
At Christmas-tide the open hand
Scatters its bounty o'er sea and land,
And none are left to grieve alone,
For Love is heaven and claims its own.
Margaret Elizabeth Sangster
There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.
Erma Bombeck, I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression
Are they Christmas fairies stealing
Rows of little socks to fill?
Are they angels floating hither
With their message of good-will?
What sweet spell are these elves weaving,
As like larks they chirp and sing?
Louisa May Alcott, "Merry Christmas," in The Horn of Plenty. 1876
Santa knows Physics: Of all colors, Red Light penetrates fog best. That's why Benny the Blue-nosed reindeer never got the gig.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
The one thing women don't want to find in their stockings on Christmas morning is their husband.
Once again, my dear people,
Merry Christmas is here,
With holly and mistletoe
And its good will and cheer!
With its joys and its heartaches,
With its laughter and song,
It comes as a reminder
That time marches along.
Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "When Christmas Comes" (1940s)
The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.
I hear that in many places something has happened to Christmas; that it is changing from a time of merriment and carefree gaiety to a holiday which is filled with tedium; that many people dread the day and the obligation to give Christmas presents is a nightmare to weary, bored souls; that the children of enlightened parents no longer believe in Santa Claus; that all in all, the effort to be happy and have pleasure makes many honest hearts grow dark with despair instead of beaming with good will and cheerfulness.
Julia Peterkin, A Plantation Christmas. 1934
The earth has grown old with its burden of care,
But at Christmas it always is young.
Nothing's as mean as giving a little child something useful for Christmas.
The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.
Let Christmas not become a thing
Merely of merchant's trafficking,
Of tinsel, bell and holly wreath
And surface pleasure, but beneath
The childish glamour, let us find
Nourishment for soul and mind.
Let us follow kinder ways
Through our teeming human maze,
And help the age of peace to come
From a Dreamer's martyrdom.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas, make the Yuletide gay.
It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.
It matters not what the custom may be,
For Christmas is loved by you and by me!
Yes; the years may come and the years may go;
But, when December wind doth, coldly, blow,
We all, I guess, are just children once more
And we plan our gifts, as we did of yore.
Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "Christmas" (1940s)
Three phrases that sum up Christmas are: Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men, and Batteries not Included.
I once bought my kids a set of batteries for Christmas with a note on it saying, toys not included.
Christmas begins about the first of December with an office party and ends when you finally realize what you spent, around April fifteenth of the next year.
P.J. O'Rourke, Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People
Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit.
Once again we find ourselves enmeshed in the Holiday Season, that very special time of year when we join with our loved ones in sharing centuries-old traditions such as trying to find a parking space at the mall. We traditionally do this in my family by driving around the parking lot until we see a shopper emerge from the mall, then we follow her, in very much the same spirit as the Three Wise Men, who 2,000 years ago followed a star, week after week, until it led them to a parking space.
Keep your Christmas-heart open all the year round.
Wouldn't life be worth the living
Wouldn't dreams be coming true
If we kept the Christmas spirit
All the whole year through?
The universal joy of Christmas is certainly wonderful. We ring the bells when princes are born, or toll a mournful dirge when great men pass away. Nations have their red-letter days, their carnivals and festivals, but once in the year and only once, the whole world stands still to celebrate the advent of a life.
We ring the bells and we raise the strain
We hang up garlands everywhere
And bid the tapers twinkle fair,
And feast and frolic — and then we go
Back to the same old lives again.
I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.
Christmas is a time to open our hearts to God and his gifts. Just like the rest of the year.
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know,
Where the tree tops glisten
And children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow.
Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.
Whatever else be lost among the years,
Let us keep Christmas still a shining thing;
Whatever doubts assail us, or what fears,
Let us hold close one day, remembering
Its poignant meaning for the hearts of men.
Let us get back our childlike faith again.
Grace Noll Crowell
O Christmas Sun! What holy task is thine!
To fold a world in the embrace of God!
Guy Wetmore Carryl
We look back on our childhood
When we all were so gay;
There was nothing but pleasure
Every dear Christmas Day.
But as each one grows older,
And memories crowd 'round
Of all the joys in the past,
And we miss the dear sound
Of the voice of a loved one
Who is absent this year,
Then, it's hard to recapture
Christmas spirit and cheer!
Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "When Christmas Comes" (1940s)
Christmas is a day of meaning and traditions, a special day spent in the warm circle of family and friends.
Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine;
Love was born at Christmas;
Star and angels gave the sign.
Christmas — that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance — a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.
Augusta E. Rundel
Santa is very jolly because he knows where all the bad girls live.
It is the most human and kindly of seasons, as fully penetrated and irradiated with the feeling of human brotherhood, which is the essential spirit of Christianity, as the month of June with sunshine and the balmy breath of roses.
George William Curtis
People can't concentrate properly on blowing other people to pieces if their minds are poisoned by thoughts suitable to the twenty-fifth of December.
Christmas gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.
Christmas in Bethlehem. The ancient dream: a cold, clear night made brilliant by a glorious star, the smell of incense, shepherds and wise men falling to their knees in adoration of the sweet baby, the incarnation of perfect love.
Oh! lovely voices of the sky
Which hymned the Saviour's birth,
Are ye not singing still on high,
Ye that sang, "Peace on earth"?
We hear the beating of wings over Bethlehem and a light that is not of the sun or of the stars shines in the midnight sky. Let the beauty of the story take away all narrowness, all thought of formal creeds. Let it be remembered as a story that has happened again and again, to men of many different races, that has been expressed through many religions, that has been called by many different names. Time and space and language lay no limitations upon human brotherhood.
New York Times. 1937 December 25th
Which Christmas is the most vivid to me? It's always the next Christmas.