I find Christmas very difficult

Maybe Christmas..., he thought, "...Doesn't come from a store." "Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!"

We shall have a harder Christmas than we have known since the war.

Ever since the Christmas of '53, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving — Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home.

To appreciate Christmas to the full, one must know how it feels to be deprived of its blessings

That's what I'm saying about Christmas, I might not be in the mood for it; December 25th

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. Three hundred sixty-five days later, we try again and find that the same thing has happened. Each time the goal is reached, it becomes Not So Much Fun, and we're off to reach the next one, then the next one, then the next.

And oh! I shall find how, day by day,
All thoughts and things look older;
How the laugh of pleasure grows less gay,
And the heart of friendship colder.

I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas. It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject; a wasteful, disastrous subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blasphemous and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and anyone who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages.

I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas into these articles. It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject; a wasteful, disastrous, subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blashphemous, and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and any one who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages.

Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, not spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.

The thought of Christmas overwhelms him. He no longer looks forward to the holiday; he wants only to be on the other side of the season. His impatience makes him feel that he is incontrovertibly, finally, an adult.

There was something disruptive about Christmas and not only in the merely material way. The original Christmas had proved exceedingly disrupting to the entire world and the tremors of the original event vibrated through every life year by year.

The author's conviction on this day of the New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.