Anything Under the Sun

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.  ~Carol Nelson

He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.  ~Roy L. Smith

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.  ~Charles Dickens

Christmas is the gentlest, loveliest festival of the revolving year – and yet, for all that, when it speaks, its voice has strong authority.  ~W.J. Cameron

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree:  the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.  ~Burton Hillis

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.  ~Andy Rooney

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, 1836

There has been only one Christmas – the rest are anniversaries.  ~W.J. Cameron

‘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.

~Walter Scott

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.  ~Eric Sevareid

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!  ~Author Unknown

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.  ~Charles Dickens

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.  ~Washington Irving

Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.  ~Peg Bracken

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.  ~Kate L. Bosher

At Christmas, all roads lead home.  ~Marjorie Holmes

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.  ~W.T. Ellis

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

Even as an adult I find it difficult to sleep on Christmas Eve.  Yuletide excitement is a potent caffeine, no matter your age.  ~Terri Guillemets

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.  ~Richard Lamm

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

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, “Let Every Day Be Christmas,” 1976

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?  ~G.K. Chesterton

Christmas is the day that holds all time together.  ~Alexander Smith

I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.  ~Harlan Miller

From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it.  ~Katharine Whitehorn

In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it ‘Christmas’ and went to church; the Jews called it ‘Hanukkah’ and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank.  People passing each other on the street would say ‘Merry Christmas!’ or ‘Happy Hanukkah!’  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!”  ~David Grayson

A Christmas candle is a lovely thing;

It makes no noise at all,

But softly gives itself away.

~Eva Logue

Christmas is not as much about opening our presents as opening our hearts.  ~Janice Maeditere

Perhaps the best Yuletide decoration is being wreathed in smiles.  ~Author Unknown

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.

~Alfred Noyes

For the spirit of Christmas fulfils the greatest hunger of mankind.  ~Loring A. Schuler

This is the message of Christmas:  We are never alone.  ~Taylor Caldwell

Tradition: sit with husband in a room lit only by tree lights and remember that our blessings outnumber the lights.  Happy Christmas to all.  ~Betsy Cañas Garmon, http://www.wildthymecreative.com

At Christmas play and make good cheer,

For Christmas comes but once a year

~Thomas Tusser

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!

~Author Unknown

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

Oh, for the good old days when people would stop Christmas shopping when they ran out of money.  ~Author Unknown

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.  ~May Sarton

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.  ~Leigh Hunt

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.

~Richard Crashaw

I do like Christmas on the whole…. In its clumsy way, it does approach Peace and Goodwill.  But it is clumsier every year.  ~E.M. Forster

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…

~Edgar Guest

Christmas is the season when you buy this year’s gifts with next year’s money.  ~Author Unknown

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.  ~Samuel Johnson

As long as we know in our hearts what Christmas ought to be, Christmas is.  ~Eric Sevareid

When we recall Christmas past, we usually find that the simplest things – not the great occasions – give off the greatest glow of happiness.  ~Bob Hope

[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.  ~D.D. Monroe

Roses are reddish

Violets are bluish

If it weren’t for Christmas

We’d all be Jewish.

~Benny Hill

May the spirit of Christmas bring you peace,

The gladness of Christmas give you hope,

The warmth of Christmas grant you love.

~Author Unknown

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.  ~Andy Rooney

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.  ~Agnes M. Pahro

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 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?  ~Don Meredith

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.  ~Author Unknown

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.  ~Author Unknown

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.  ~Robert Lynd

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!

~Carolyn Wells

‘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!

~Carolyn Wells

There are no strangers on Christmas Eve.  ~Mildred Cram and Adele Comandini

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.  ~P.J. O’Rourke

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.  ~Robert Kirby

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.

~Vachel Lindsay

Like snowflakes, my Christmas memories gather and dance – each beautiful, unique and too soon gone.  ~Deborah Whipp

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

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.  ~Charles Dickens

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

The one thing women don’t want to find in their stockings on Christmas morning is their husband.  ~Joan Rivers

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.  ~Jay Leno

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….

~Phillips Brooks

Nothing’s as mean as giving a little child something useful for Christmas.  ~Kin Hubbard

The worst gift is a fruitcake.  There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.  ~Johnny Carson

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.

~Madeline Morse

Have yourself a merry little Christmas, make the Yuletide gay.  ~Ralph Blane

It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.  ~Charles Dickens

Three phrases that sum up Christmas are:  Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men, and Batteries not Included.  ~Author Unknown

I once bought my kids a set of batteries for Christmas with a note on it saying, toys not included.  ~Bernard Manning

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

Next to a circus there ain’t nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit.  ~Kin Hubbard

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.  ~Dave Barry

Keep your Christmas-heart open all the year round.  ~Jessica Archmint

Wouldn’t life be worth the living

Wouldn’t dreams be coming true

If we kept the Christmas spirit

All the whole year through?

~Author Unknown

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.  ~Author Unknown

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.

~Susan Coolidge

I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.  ~Dick Gregory

Christmas is a time to open our hearts to God and his gifts.  Just like the rest of the year.  ~Author Unknown

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…

~Irving Berlin

Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl.  But it warmed more than your body.  It warmed your heart… filled it, too, with melody that would last forever.  ~Bess Streeter Aldrich

Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.  ~Johnny Carson

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

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so?  It came without ribbons.  It came without tags.  It came without packages, boxes or bags.  And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore.  Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.  What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store.  What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.  ~Dr Seuss

O Christmas Sun!  What holy task is thine!

To fold a world in the embrace of God!

~Guy Wetmore Carryl

Christmas is a day of meaning and traditions, a special day spent in the warm circle of family and friends.  ~Margaret Thatcher

Love came down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, Love Divine;

Love was born at Christmas;

Star and angels gave the sign.

~Christina Rossetti

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.  ~Dennis Miller

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

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, – not even a mouse:

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there….

~Clement Clarke Moore

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.  ~Ogden Nash

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.  ~Oren Arnold

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.  ~Lucinda Franks

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”?

~Felicia Hemans

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, 25 December 1937, quoted in Quotations for Special Occasions by Maud van Buren, 1938, published by The H.W. Wilson Company, New York

Which Christmas is the most vivid to me?  It’s always the next Christmas.  ~Joanne Woodward

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