christmas Quotes

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”

“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”

“All aboard,” the conductor cried out.

“A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had! Worth three cents more to give away than sell, As may be shown by a simple calculation. Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter. I can’t help wishing I could send you one, In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.”

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”

“‘There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,’ returned the nephew. ‘Christmas among the rest. . . . And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!‘”

“‘There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,’ returned the nephew. ‘Christmas among the rest. But I am sure 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; 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. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!‘”

“But I am sure 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; 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.”

“But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time . . . as a good 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 . . . ”

“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry.”

″[A]nd it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”

“A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!”

“God bless us every one!”

“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”

“It should be Christmas Day, I am sure,” said she, “on which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow! . . . I’ll drink his health for your sake and the Day’s . . . not for his. Long life to him! A merry Christmas and a happy new year! He’ll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt!”

The magi, as you know, were wise men—wonderfully wise men—who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl.

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling—something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

“Dell,” said he, “let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ’em a while. They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs.”

“Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. . . . Say ‘Merry Christmas!’ Jim, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice—what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.”

The North Pole. It was a huge city standing alone at the top of the world, filled with factories where every Christmas toy was made.

He cupped his hands around his mouth. “MERRY CHRISTMAS,” he shouted. The Polar Express let out a loud blast from its whistle and sped away.

He stood, holding the bell high above him, and called out, “The first gift of Christmas!”

On Christmas eve, many years ago, I lay quietly in my bed. I did not rustle the sheets. I breathed slowly and silently. I was listening for a sound—a sound a friend had told me I’d never hear—the ringing bells of Santa’s sleigh.

What I wanted more than anything was one silver bell from Santa’s sleigh.

“Why, to the North Pole of course,” was his answer. “This is the Polar Express.”

“They are gathering at the center of the city . . . That is where Santa will give the first gift of Christmas.”

A conductor stood at the open door of one of the cars. He took a large pocket watch from his vest, then looked up at my window.

We climbed mountains so high it seemed as if we would scrape the moon. But the Polar Express never slowed down. Faster and faster we ran along . . .

Santa circled once above us, then disappeared in the cold, dark polar sky.

Sarah found one last small box behind the tree. It had my name on it. Inside was the silver bell!

“Found this on the seat of my sleigh. Fix that hole in your pocket.” Signed, “Mr. C.”

At one time most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I’ve grown old, the bell still rings for me as it does for all who truly believe.

Outside, the lights of towns and villages flickered in the distance as the Polar Express raced northward.

The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars (even the girls) and talked dirty and hit little kids and cussed their teachers and took the name of the Lord in vain and set fire to Fred Shoemaker’s old broken-down toolhouse.

They were just so all-around awful you could hardly believe they were real: Ralph, Imogene, Leroy, Claude, Ollie, and Gladys--six skinny, stringy-haired kids all alike except for being different sizes and having different black-and-blue places where they had clonked each other.

“They looked like the people you see on the six o’clock news—refugees, sent to wait in some strange ugly place, with all their boxes and sacks around them. It suddenly occurred to me that this was just the way it must have been for the real Holy Family, stuck away in a barn by people who didn’t much care what happened to them. They couldn’t have been very neat and tidy either, but more like this Mary and Joseph.”

Of course nobody even thought about the Herdmans in connection with the Christmas pageant. Most of us spent all week in school being pounded and poked and pushed around by Herdmans, and we looked forward to Sunday as a real day of rest.

Elmer Hopkins, the minister’s son, has been Joseph for as long as I can remember; and my friend Alice Wendleken is Mary because she’s so smart, so neat and clean, and, most of all, so holy-looking.

The thing was, the Herdmans didn’t know anything about the Christmas story. They knew that Christmas was Jesus’ birthday, but everything else was news to them—the shepherds, the Wise Men, the star, the stable, the crowded inn.

I couldn’t believe it. Among other things, the Herdmans were famous for never sitting still and never paying attention to anyone—teachers, parents (their own or anybody else’s), the truant officer, the police—yet here they were, eyes glued on my mother and taking in every word. ‘What’s that?’ they would yell whenever they didn’t understand the language, and when Mother read about there being no room at the inn, Imogene’s jaw dropped and she sat up in her seat. ‘My God!’ she said. ‘Not even for Jesus?’”

“What was the matter with Joseph that he didn’t tell them? Her pregnant and everything.”

“Oil! What kind of a cheap king hands out oil for a present? You get better presents from the firemen!”

After all, that was the whole point of Jesus—that he didn’t come down on a cloud like something out of “Amazing Comics,” but that he was born and lived . . . a real person.

Since Gladys was the only one in the pageant who had anything to say she made the most of it: “Hey! Unto you a child is born!” she hollered, as if it was, for sure, the best news in the world. And all the shepherds trembled, sore afraid—of Gladys, mainly, but it looked good anyway.

[E]veryone sang “Silent Night,” including the audience. We sang all the verses too, and when we got to “Son of God, Love’s pure light” I happened to look at Imogene and I almost dropped my hymn book on a baby angel. Everyone had been waiting all this time for the Herdmans to do something absolutely unexpected. And sure enough, that was what happened. Imogene Herdman was crying. In the candlelight her face was all shiny with tears and she didn’t even bother to wipe them away. She just sat there—awful old Imogene—in her crookedy veil, crying and crying and crying.

When it was over people stood around the lobby of the church talking about what was different this year. There was something special, everyone said—they couldn’t put their finger on what.

“Welcome Christmas. Bring your cheer, Cheer to all Whos, far and near.”

In the cold and the darkness, a poor little girl, with bare head and naked feet, roamed through the streets.

She lighted another match, and then she found herself sitting under a beautiful Christmas-tree. . . . Thousands of tapers were burning upon the green branches, and colored pictures, like those she had seen in the show-windows, looked down upon it all. The little one stretched out her hand towards them, and the match went out.

“Grandmother,” cried the little one, “O take me with you; I know you will go away when the match burns out; you will vanish like the warm stove, the roast goose, and the large, glorious Christmas-tree.”

Far down in the forest, where the warm sun and the fresh air made a sweet resting-place, grew a pretty little fir-tree; and yet it was not happy, it wished so much to be tall like its companions— the pines and firs which grew around it.

“He brought back their snoof and their tringlers and fuzzles, Brought back their pantookas, their dafflers and wuzzles.”

A short time before Christmas, the discontented fir-tree was the first to fall. As the axe cut through the stem, and divided the pith, the tree fell with a groan to the earth, conscious of pain and faintness, and forgetting all its anticipations of happiness, in sorrow at leaving its home in the forest.

“Christmas Day is in our grasp So long as we have hands to grasp.”

“But I think that the most likely reason of all May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.”

“Then he got an idea! An awful idea! The Grinch got a wonderful, awful idea!”

“And what happened then? Well, in Whoville they say That the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day!”

“He brought everything back, all the food for the feast! And he, he himself, the Grinch carved the roast beast!”

“He rode into Whoville. He brought back their toys. He brought back their floof to the Who girls and boys.”

“I know just what to do!” The Grinch laughed in his throat. “I’ll make a quick Santy Claus hat and a coat.”

“I wonder whether anything so brilliant will ever happen to me,” thought the fir-tree. “It would be much better than crossing the sea. I long for it almost with pain. Oh! when will Christmas be here? I am now as tall and well grown as those which were taken away last year. Oh! that I were now laid on the wagon, or standing in the warm room, with all that brightness and splendor around me!”

“They’re just waking up! I know just what they’ll do! Their mouths will hang open a minute or two Then the Whos down in Whoville will all cry boo-hoo!”

“Only one,” replied the fir-tree; “I heard it on the happiest evening of my life; but I did not know I was so happy at the time.”

“Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot. But the Grinch who lived just North of Whoville did not!”

“But this sound wasn’t sad! Why, this sound sounded glad!”

“With a smile to his soul, he descended Mount Crumpet Cheerily blowing “Who! Who!” on his trumpet.”

“Then he slithered and slunk, with a smile most unpleasant, Around the whole room, and he took every present!”

“Packed it up with their presents, their ribbons, their wrappings, Their snoof and their fuzzles, their tringlers and trappings! Ten thousand feet up, up the side of Mount Crumpet, He rode with his load to the tiptop to dump it!”

“She stared at the Grinch and said, ‘Santy Claus, why, why are you taking our Christmas tree? WHY?‘”

“And then! Oh, the noise! Oh, the noise! Noise! Noise! Noise! There’s one thing I hate! All the NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!”

“Christmas Day will always be Just as long as we have we.”

“Then he growled, with his Grinch fingers nervously drumming, ‘I must find some way to keep Christmas from coming!‘”

And now the folding doors were thrown open, and a troop of children rushed in as if they intended to upset the tree; they were followed more silently by their elders. For a moment the little ones stood silent with astonishment, and then they shouted for joy, till the room rang, and they danced merrily round the tree, while one present after another was taken from it.

It thought of its fresh youth in the forest, of the merry Christmas evening, and of the little mice who had listened to the story of “Humpty Dumpty.” “Past! past!” said the old tree; “Oh, had I but enjoyed myself while I could have done so! but now it is too late.”

“They’ll stand close together, with Christmas bells ringing. They’ll stand hand-in-hand, and those Whos will start singing!”

“Then he slid down the chimney, a rather tight pinch. But if Santa could do it, then so could the Grinch.”

“Every Who down in Whoville, the tall and the small, Was singing without any presents at all!”

“Welcome Christmas while we stand Heart to heart and hand in hand.”

“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!”

“For, tomorrow, I know all the Who girls and boys Will wake bright and early. They’ll rush for their toys!”

″‘What the [heck],’ Dad said. ‘It’s Christmas. You can have a planet if you want.’ And he gave me Venus.”

“I want to be five years old again for an hour. I want to laugh a lot and cry a lot. I want to be picked up and rocked to sleep in someone’s arms, and carried up to bed just one more time. I know what I really want for Christmas. I want my childhood back.”

“I stare at Clare, standing before me, and I am sorry to be here, sorry to ruin her Christmas. “I’m sorry, Clare. I didn’t mean to put all this sadness on you. I just find Christmas… difficult.”

“The Christmas presents once opened are Not So Much Fun as they were while we were in the process of examining, lifting, shaking, thinking about, and opening them.”

“Christmas at home had meant eating Momma’s bread pudding with maple syrup and nutmeg, and reading the Gospel of Matthew out loud whilst Ruth played in Momma’s lap. I was miles away from celebrating like that.”

“‘Maybe Christmas,’ he thought, ‘doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!’”

“Oh, Mr. Edwards, thank you, thank you for going all the way to Independence to find Santa Claus for us.”

“In the paved city it was Christmas time. There were red and green electric lights strung crisscrossed everywhere, and all turned on in the daytime. Old Phoenix would have been lost if she had not distrusted her eyesight and depended on her feet to know where to take her.”

“This year I discovered something really strange. I discovered that my mother was sending a Christmas card to her parents in Ohio. I found out because I was looking through the pile of cards one day when I had a cold and stayed home from school. There it was—just like that. The envelope said Mr. and Mrs. Paul Hutchins, and that’s them. My grandparents! I didn’t mention anything about it to my mother. I had the feeling I wasn’t supposed to know.”

“But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight— ‘Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!’ ”

“The children were nestled all snug in their beds; While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;”

“When what to my wondering eyes did appear, But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,”

“When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.”

“The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;”

“With a little old driver so lively and quick, I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.”

“He had a broad face and a little round belly That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.”

“He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;”

“Oh, what do you think Godfather Drosselmeier has made for us?”

“So up to the housetop the coursers they flew With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too— And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.”

″‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;”

“And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name: ‘Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donner and Blitzen! To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!’ ”

“Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.”

“His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!”

“Toad opened his present from Frog. It was a beautiful new clock. The two friends sat by the fire. The hands of the clock moved to show the hours of a merry Christmas Eve.”

“It didn’t feel like peace on earth, I can tell you that. There wasn’t a lot of goodwill towards men floating about.”

“She is always away in her own world, filled with fairies designed by her favorite author, Casper Dream. Last Christmas, they found out that Will was adopted when Will was rude to their grandmother, and she said something about bad blood. ”

“And every year, folk come from all over Cornwall at Christmas time, to see Mousehole lit up with a thousand lights, shining their message of hope and a safe haven to all those who pass in peril of the sea.”

“Want to keep Christ in Christmas? Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, forgive the guilty, welcome the unwanted, care for the ill, love your enemies, and do unto others as you would have done unto you.”

“ ‘Mowzer, my handsome,’ he said, for he was a courteous and well-spoken man, ‘Mowzer, my handsome, it will soon be Christmas, and no man can stand by at Christmas and see the children starve. Someone must go fishing come what may, and I think it must be me. It cannot be the young men, for they have wives and children and mothers to weep for them if they do not return. But my wife and parents are dead long since and my children are grown and gone.’ “

“They did not find Sarah-Ann, but Ted found a watch that he’d mended then forgotten about. ‘That’s Miss Hubbard’s,’ he said. ‘She brought it to be fettled, last Christmas. Could you take it along for her, Pat? She’ll be needing it.’ “

“All Christmas day Victor played hockey and Rose made herself beautiful and Betty mixed acids.”

“My father got the dog drunk on cherry brand at the party last night. If the RSPCA hear about it he could get done. Eight days have gone by since Christmas Day but my mother still hasn’t worn the green lurex apron I bought her for Christmas! She will get bath-cubes next year. ”

″‘Born in?’ ‘Bethlehem.’ Rockhead looks up. The brain peeps out from behind the brawn. ‘Don’t worry, sir. It didn’t happen in a stable.’ Clunk. Another jest falls flat on the ground.”

“This place is a toyshop, and you are toy mice. People are going to come and buy you for children, because it’s almost a time called Christmas.”

“ ‘There is a lovely feeling about Christmas Eve,’ Pauline said. ‘My inside almost hurts being excited; I can’t sit still for wishing it was tomorrow.’ ”

″‘Christmas ought to be brought up to date,’ Maria said; ‘it ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols.‘”

I don’t like green Christmases. They’re not green—they’re just nasty faded browns and grays.

“I wish I could send my bunch to Father. I’m afraid he isn’t having such a merry Christmas as we are.”