Quotations about Christmas, including the religious aspects of the holiday, and the personal emotional experience of the season and day. Christmas is an annual festival, originally a Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus, and has become a cultural occasion of giving and receiving, of beauty and wonder. It’s also a commercial season, with lots of expectations people think they must meet to keep themselves and others happy. All those meanings and experiences are reflected in quotations here.
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.
The Dickensian Christmas-at-Home receives only perfunctory lip-service from a press which draws a steady income from the catering and amusement trades. Home-made fun is gratuitous, and gratuitousness is something which an industrialized world cannot afford to tolerate.
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.
Santa Claus wears a Red Suit,
He must be a communist.
And a beard and long hair,
Must be a pacifist.
What’s in that pipe that he’s smoking?
Christmas is a conspiracy to make single people feel lonely.
I was raised the old-fashioned way, with a stern set of moral principles: Never lie, cheat, steal or knowingly spread a venereal disease. Never speed up to hit a pedestrian or, or course, stop to kick a pedestrian who has already been hit. From which it followed, of course, that one would never ever — on pain of deletion from dozens of Christmas card lists across the country — vote Republican.
Christmas is the one time of year when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ.
A good conscience is a continual Christmas.
Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.
Even as an adult I find it difficult to sleep on Christmas Eve. Yuletide excitement is a potent caffeine, no matter your age.
Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exists, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.
Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness; the old year was preparing, like an ancient philosopher, to call his friends around him, and amidst the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently and calmly away.
Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!
I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
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!
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.
There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.
Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused — in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened — by the recurrence of Christmas.
Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone.
Every time we love, every time we give, it’s Christmas.
Credo at Christmas
At Christmas time I believe the things that children do.
I believe with English children that holly placed in windows will protect our homes from evil.
I believe with Swiss children that the touch of edelweiss will charm a person with love.
I believe with Italian children that La Befana is not an ugly doll but a good fairy who will gladden the heart of all.
I believe with Greek children that coins concealed in freshly baked loaves of bread will bring good luck to anyone who finds them.
I believe with German children that the sight of a Christmas tree will lessen hostility among adults.
I believe with French children that lentils soaked and planted in a bowl will rekindle life in people who have lost hope.
I believe with Dutch children that the horse Sleipner will fly through the sky and fill the earth with joy.
I believe with Swedish children that Jultomte will come and deliver gifts to the poor as well as to the rich.
I believe with Finnish children that parties held on St.Stephen’s Day will erase sorrow.
I believe with Danish children that the music of a band playing from a church tower will strengthen humankind.
I believe with Bulgarian children that sparks from a Christmas log will create warmth in human souls.
I believe with American children that the sending of Christmas cards will build friendships.
I believe with all children that there will be peace on earth.
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!’
On a busy day twenty-two thousand people come to visit Santa, and I was told that it is an elf’s lot to remain merry in the face of torment and adversity. I promised to keep that in mind.
I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white man would be coming into my neighborhood after dark.
For this your mother sweated in the cold,
For this you bled upon the bitter tree:
A yard of tinsel ribbon bought and sold;
A paper wreath; a day at home for me.
The merry bells ring out, the people kneel;
Up goes the man of God before the crowd;
With voice of honey and with eyes of steel
He drones your humble gospel to the proud.
Nobody listens. Less than the wind that blows
Are all your words to us you died to save.
O Prince of Peace! O Sharon’s dewy Rose!
How mute you lie within your vaulted grave.
The stone the angel rolled away with tears
Is back upon your mouth these thousand years.
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.
Before the ice is in the pools,
Before the skaters go,
Or any cheek at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow,
Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!
There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.
A Christmas candle is a lovely thing;
It makes no noise at all,
But softly gives itself away;
While quite unselfish, it grows small.
