"Christmas was invented several centuries after the birth of Jesus, an effort by the Church of Rome to quiet internal dissent and to compete with the cults of such popular gods as Mithra.... Cromwell's Parliament made Christmas a day of penance in 1647 and banned it outright in 1652, ordering shops to stay open on Christmas Day. Puritan reformers believed that the church should not create traditions that didn't exist in the scriptures." -- Sara Sklaroff, in the Library of Congress' Civilization magazine, Dec.-Jan., 1996-97
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"The holidays are welcome to me partly because they are such rallying points for the affections which get so much thrust aside in the business and preoccupations of daily life." -- George E. Woodberry, private letter
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"The things we do at Christmas are touched with a certain extravagance, as beautiful, in some of its aspects, as the extravagance of nature in June." -- Robert Collyer, quoted in A Year of Sunshine
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"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." -- former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm
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"In the United States, Christmas has become the rape of an idea." -- author Richard Bach
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"And the angel said unto them, 'Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.' And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." -- Luke 2
***
"Were I a philosopher, I would write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life needs 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, The Peal of Bells
***
"The time draws near the birth of Christ / The moon is hid; the night is still / The Christmas bells from hill to hill / Answer each other in the mist." -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, 1850
***
"Contemporary Christmas, the universal winter holiday, needs to be rethought. In the hothouse of American culture, it has metastasized into a holiday of obligation that consumes an estimated 1 million person-years per season in the United States alone. The bloated feast demands the sacrifice of 36 million trees, and causes almost 80,000 tons of discarded wrapping paper to be interred in the nation's landfills. Then there are the ecological and human costs of producing, wrapping and transporting 220 million letters and more than 6 million parcels a day at the height of the Christmas rush. If the holiday is expansive, it is also expensive. It fuels more than half of the average year's fur, diamond and luxury watch sales. Hard liquor sells 30 percent faster in December than September...." -- Tom Flynn, The Trouble With Christmas
***
"Our children await Christmas presents like politicians getting election returns: There's the Uncle Fred precinct and the Aunt Ruth district still to come in." -- Marcelene Cox, Ladies' Home Journal, December 1950
***
"Fir balsam is like no other cargo. Even a workaday truck is exalted and wears a consecrated look while carrying these aromatic dumplings to the hungry dwellers in cities." -- E.B. White, Homecoming, Dec. 10, 1955
***
"Heap on more wood! The wind is chill / but let it whistle as it will / we'll keep our Christmas merry still." -- Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, introduction
The wonderful season of caring and family closeness is upon us, bringing special feelings that are almost magical.
It's hard to fathom why late December holds such power. The Bible doesn't specify this time for the birth of Jesus. In fact, most scholars think he was born in springtime, but the Vatican later picked Dec. 25 to co-opt pagan fests of the winter solstice.
Nonetheless, this spot on the calendar has profound meaning. During World War I, troops in trenches sang hymns to the enemy on Christmas eve, temporarily refusing to kill. The date has grown into the Western world's exquisite holiday, a tender period of compassion and family warmth.
As usual, we honor this season by reprinting some nuggets of holiday wisdom.
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"Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful." -- Norman Vincent Peale
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"A Christmas Day, to be perfect, should be clear and cold, with holly branches in berry, a blazing fire, a dinner with mince pies, and games and forfeits in the evening. You cannot have it in perfection if you are very fine and fashionable." -- Leigh Hunt, quoted in A Year of Sunshine
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"Was there ever a wider and more loving conspiracy than that which keeps the venerable figure of Santa Claus from slipping away, with all the other old-time myths, into the forsaken wonderland of the past?" -- Hamilton Wright Mabie, My Study Fire
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"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. 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." -- editorial in the New York Sun, December 1897, in response to an 8-year-old girl's inquiry letter
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"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 traveler, thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and his quiet home." -- Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1836
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"[Christmas is] 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." -- Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 1843, quoted by Charleston minister Jim Lewis in his newsletter.
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"One doesn't forget the rounded wonder in the eyes of a boy as he comes bursting upstairs on Christmas morning and finds the two-wheeler or the fire truck of which for weeks he scarcely dared dream." -- Max Lerner, The Unfinished Country
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"At Christmas I no more desire a rose than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth." -- Shakespeare, Love's Labor's Lost
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"I do hope your Christmas has had a little touch of eternity in among the rush and pitter-patter and all. It always seems such a mixing of this world and the next - but that after all is the idea." -- Evelyn Underhill, private letter
***
"Christmas was invented several centuries after the birth of Jesus, an effort by the Church of Rome to quiet internal dissent and to compete with the cults of such popular gods as Mithra.... Cromwell's Parliament made Christmas a day of penance in 1647 and banned it outright in 1652, ordering shops to stay open on Christmas Day. Puritan reformers believed that the church should not create traditions that didn't exist in the scriptures." -- Sara Sklaroff, in the Library of Congress' Civilization magazine, Dec.-Jan., 1996-97
***
"The holidays are welcome to me partly because they are such rallying points for the affections which get so much thrust aside in the business and preoccupations of daily life." -- George E. Woodberry, private letter
***
"The things we do at Christmas are touched with a certain extravagance, as beautiful, in some of its aspects, as the extravagance of nature in June." -- Robert Collyer, quoted in A Year of Sunshine
***
"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." -- former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm
***
"In the United States, Christmas has become the rape of an idea." -- author Richard Bach
***
"And the angel said unto them, 'Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.' And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." -- Luke 2
***
"Were I a philosopher, I would write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life needs 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, The Peal of Bells
***
"The time draws near the birth of Christ / The moon is hid; the night is still / The Christmas bells from hill to hill / Answer each other in the mist." -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, 1850
***
"Contemporary Christmas, the universal winter holiday, needs to be rethought. In the hothouse of American culture, it has metastasized into a holiday of obligation that consumes an estimated 1 million person-years per season in the United States alone. The bloated feast demands the sacrifice of 36 million trees, and causes almost 80,000 tons of discarded wrapping paper to be interred in the nation's landfills. Then there are the ecological and human costs of producing, wrapping and transporting 220 million letters and more than 6 million parcels a day at the height of the Christmas rush. If the holiday is expansive, it is also expensive. It fuels more than half of the average year's fur, diamond and luxury watch sales. Hard liquor sells 30 percent faster in December than September...." -- Tom Flynn, The Trouble With Christmas
***
"Our children await Christmas presents like politicians getting election returns: There's the Uncle Fred precinct and the Aunt Ruth district still to come in." -- Marcelene Cox, Ladies' Home Journal, December 1950
***
"Fir balsam is like no other cargo. Even a workaday truck is exalted and wears a consecrated look while carrying these aromatic dumplings to the hungry dwellers in cities." -- E.B. White, Homecoming, Dec. 10, 1955
***
"Heap on more wood! The wind is chill / but let it whistle as it will / we'll keep our Christmas merry still." -- Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, introduction
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