#christmas

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful. ↗

— Norman Vincent Peale

#behold #christmas #everything #magic #magic wand

I think the people who are making Christmas-themed movies today feel that people are more cynical about Christmas. There's more of an edge. ↗

— Leonard Maltin

#christmas #cynical #edge #feel #i

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, when they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky. So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, with the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too. ↗

— Clement Clarke Moore

#before #dry #flew #fly #full

Every gift which is given, even though is be small, is in reality great, if it is given with affection. ↗

— Pindar

#affection #even #every #gift #given

No, Roger had not seen the funny side. But there had been a moment when, after looking at his watch, he had thought: I can remember when Christmas morning would start at about half past ten with a glass of Buck's Fizz in bed. Now it begins at half past five, with a test of my fine motor skills and ability to read Korean. ↗

— John Lanchester

#children #christmas #relaxation #toys #funny

Money is made at Christmas out of holly and mistletoe, but who save the vendors would greatly care if no green branch were procurable? One symbol, indeed, has obscured all others--the minted round of metal. And one may safely say that, of all the ages since a coin first became the symbol of power, ours is that in which it yields to the majority of its possessors the poorest return in heart's contentment. ↗

— George R. Gissing

#coin #contentment #discontent #life #money

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 ↗

— Maud van Buren

#beauty

Christmas is the marriage of chaos and design. The real sound of life, for once, can burst out because a formal place has been set for it. At the moment when things have gotten sufficiently loose, the secret selves that these familiar persons hold inside them shake the room...An undercurrent of clowning and jostling is part of the process by which we succeed finally in making our necessary noise: despite the difficulty of getting the words right, of getting the singers on the same page, of keeping the ritual from falling apart into the anarchy of separate impulses. From such clatter--extended and punctuated by whatever instrument is handy, a triangle a tambourine, a Chinese gone--beauty is born. ↗

— Geoffrey O'Brien

#beauty-in-literature #carol #christmas #family #singing-with-your-heart

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

#courage

And now brothers, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him the only life? ↗

— Frederick Buechner

#christmas #cross #devotional #easter #jesus