Christmas holidays

“ Christmas centers on the birth of a child, and on the message of hope and peace. We hear that message in many ways at Christmas, and it never loses the power to lift our hearts. The holidays can also deepen our sense of gratitude for life, and for all the family and friends who fill our lives. In this great and prosperous land, we remember how much we have been given, and how much we have to share. ”

“ The English, from the great prevalence of rural habit throughout every class of society, have always been found of those festivals and holidays, which agreeably interrupt the stillness of country life, and they were, in former days, particularly observant of the religious and social rites of Christmas. It is inspiring to read even the dry details which some antiquaries have given of the quaint humors, the burlesque pageants, the complete abandonment to mirth and good-fellowship with which this festival was celebrated. ”

“ No other holiday has so rich an heritage of old customs and observances as Christmas. The Yule Log has from time immemorial been haled to the open fire-place on Christmas Eve, and lighted with the embers of its predecessor to sanctify the roof-tree and protect it against those evil spirits over whom the season is in everyway a triumph. ”

“ How one pities the unhappy Australians, with whom everything is turned topsy-turvy, and who holds Christmas at midsummer! The face of Christmas glows all the brighter for the cold. The heart warms as the frost increases. ”

“ THE PEACE EGG. A CHRISTMAS TALE.
Every one ought to be happy at Christmas. But there are many things which ought to be, and yet are not; and people are sometimes sad even in the Christmas holidays.
The Captain and his wife were sad, though it was Christmas Eve. Sad, though they were in the prime of life, blessed with good health, devoted to each other and to their children, with competent means, a comfortable house on a little freehold property of their own, and, one might say, everything that heart could desire. ”

“ I sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day. We try to crowd into it the long arrears of kindliness and humanity of the whole year. As for me, I like to take my Christmas a little at a time, all through the year. And thus I drift along into the holidays—let them overtake me unexpectedly—waking up some fine morning and suddenly saying to myself:
"Why, this is Christmas Day!" ”

“ We went to church early; then we had been down to the Five points to carry the poor outcasts there something for their Christmas dinner; in fact, we had done wonders of work, and Molly was in high spirits, and so the Christmas dinner was a great success.
"Dear me, sir, no! Just as you say. Holidays are not in the least wearisome any more. Plague on it! When a man tells me now that he hates holidays, I find myself getting very wroth. ”

“ 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, and transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and his quiet home! ”

“ This legend embodies the true Christmas spirit which realizes, with a rush of love to the heart, the divinity in every one of "the least of these" our brethren. Selfishness is rebuked, the feeling of universal brotherhood is fostered, while the length of this holiday season by encouraging the reunion of families and of friends, provides a wonderful rallying place for early affections. A wholesome and joyous current of religious feeling flows through the entire season to temper its extravagance and regulate its mirth. ”

“ Of all the old festivals, however, that of Christmas awakens the strongest and most heartfelt associations. There is a tone of solemn and sacred feeling that blends with our conviviality, and lifts the spirit to a state of hallowed and elevated enjoyment. ”

“ The varying forms of Christmas observance at different times and in different lands are entertainingly shown by one trained in choosing and presenting the best to younger readers. The symbolism, good cheer, and sentiment of the grandest of holidays are shown as they appeal in similar fashion to those whose lives seem so widely diverse. ”

“ There is something in the very season of the year, that gives a charm to the festivity of Christmas. At other times, we derive a great portion of our pleasures from the mere beauties of Nature. Our feelings sally forth and dissipate themselves over the sunny landscape, and we "live abroad and everywhere." ”

“ Of all nights of the year there is not one that is more anxiously awaited by young people than the night that precedes Christmas. Then begins the great festival of the year; the festival in honour of the birth of Christ; the festival that reminds us of the Child born in a manger, of the shepherds near Bethlehem watching their flocks by night, and of the angels that sang of peace and goodwill to men. It is the most joyous of all holiday seasons ”

“ Thus it came to pass that religion and the Church appropriated so many of Nature's festivals; that the Roman Saturnalia became our precious Christmas, the full-moon spring equinoctial feast grew into our beautiful Easter, and the harvest feast took the form of a Thanksgiving service.
These changes suggest the function and future of holidays in the light of their origin. As shown above, the psychical growth of man from an emotional to an intellectual creature has almost entirely changed the function of holidays. ”

“ Christmas is our most important holiday, and its literature is correspondingly rich. Yet until now no adequate bundle of Christmas treasures in poetry and prose has found its way into the library of Santa Claus. ”

“ Christmas, it must be remembered was not then a single day of sport. It had the preliminary novena which began December 16, and it ended on January 6, or Twelfth Night. All this period was devoted to holiday making.
It was a democratic festival. All classes mixed in its merry-makings. Hospitality was universal. An English country gentleman of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries held open house. With daybreak on Christmas morning the tenants and neighbors thronged into the hall. ”

“ 'Twas Christmas broached the mightiest ale,
'Twas Christmas told the merriest tale; ”

“ Long shafts of light from the bare, uncurtained windows of the old church lay across the snow, as the cracked bell jangled through the crisp air its Christmas greeting. The jingle of sleigh-bells, the creaking of the runners, merry voices, bits of song, gay laughter, united in a Christmas carol redolent with Christmas spirit—Peace on earth, good will to men. ”

“ Yonder they dance and play upon the branches of my Tree, God bless them, merrily, and my heart dances and plays too!
And I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday—the longer, the better—from the great boarding-school, where we are for ever working at our arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest. As to going a visiting, where can we not go, if we will; where have we not been, when we would; starting our fancy from our Christmas Tree! ”

“ Even the poorest cottage welcomed the festive season with green decorations of bay and holly—the cheerful fire glanced its rays through the lattice, inviting the passenger to raise the latch, and join the gossip knot huddled around the hearth, beguiling the long evening with legendary jokes and oft-told Christmas tales. ”

“ What, then, between the sleigh-rides, the bell-melodies, old Santa Claus and his fictions, the egg-nogg and lunches, the weddings and the willingness to be entertained, the Americans find no difficulty in enjoying Christmas Day. ”

“ This was the day before Christmas Eve, that delightful day of preparation for the greatest festival in all the year—the day when in most households there are many little mysteries afoot, when parcels come and go, and are smothered [12] away so as to be ready when Santa Claus comes his rounds; when some are busy decking the rooms with holly and mistletoe; when the cook is busiest of all, and savoury smells rise from the kitchen, telling of good things to be eaten on the morrow. ”

“ Dreary Christmases I have spent, as have many others, in country hotels or on the road, but the utter loneliness and longing for home were invariably lightened by the cheerfulness and comradeship of fellow travellers, who, while utter strangers, were filled with the spirit of Christmas, and if it was not a merry one, it was not altogether a miserable day. ”

“ I began to reflect upon the fact that Christmas is the one holiday which cannot be separated from the brightness of a child’s eyes or the music of a child’s laughter.
I fell to pondering the fact that when old folks think of Christmas they think of the days when they were young. When their children are grown and have gone far away from home, the parents refresh their hearts by thinking of the time when there was a Christmas tree in the nursery and the glad shout of children exulting over their treasures filled all the house. ”

“ Christmas comes at the darkest and dreariest season of the year, making short, cold days, and longer, colder nights the holiday season, just as He, whose birth the day commemorates, comes to human hearts in the darkest and coldest hours of desolation. ”

“ But with all this glorious sunshine, sultry and Oppressive atmosphere, Christmas is not Christmas as we know it in Old England, where friends meet friends in all the warmth of overflowing love and hospitality round the well-filled board, and the social gatherings round the hearth, with song and dance, and Christmas-tree. ”

“ I am not, as you thought I was, a hundred years old, but I can conjure up, as anybody can, a picture of Christmas in the good old days of a hundred years ago: the quaint old-fashioned houses, standing deep among the evergreens, with the light twinkling from the windows on the snow; the warmth and comfort within; the great fire roaring on the hearth; the merry guests grouped about its blaze and the little children with their eyes dancing in the Christmas fire- light, waiting for Father Christmas in his fine mummery of red and white and cotton wool to hand the presents from the yule-tide tree. ”

“ He adds, “The spirit of hospitality has not quite forsaken us; several of the gentry are gone down to their respective seats in the country, in order to keep their Christmas in the old way, and entertain their tenants and trades-folks as their ancestors used to do, and I wish them a merry Christmas accordingly.” ”

“ He was always civilly treated, as he surely deserved to be, but Christmas was his great holiday, when he became part of it, indeed, and was made much of. So, for that matter, was everything that lived under the husbandman's roof, or within reach of it. The farmer always set a lighted candle in his window on Christmas Eve, to guide the lonesome wanderer to a hospitable hearth. ”

“ After nightfall, when the lights are burning in the busy market, and the homeward-bound crowds with baskets and heavy burdens of Christmas greens jostle one another with good-natured banter,—nobody is ever cross down here in the holiday season,—it is good to take a stroll through the Farm, if one has a spot in his heart faithful yet to the hills and the woods in spite of the latter-day city. ”

“ She has seized the tongs, she has snatched a brand,
And waved it abroad at the door!
Through the drifting snow a form she sees—
He is safe, in a moment more;
Safe—and afar are those shuddering cries,
And the baleful lights of the wolves’ red eyes!
Thus did it chance on a Christmas Eve,
In the days that are long since fled;
But a light so brave, and a gleam so true,
Through the waste of the years is shed,
As I think of that blazing, windblown brand,
Waved at the door by a slim, white hand! ”

“ Of all the pleasant sights that the angels of God, looking from their high homes, saw on earth that Christmas Eve, perhaps not one was dearer in their eyes than the spectacle here described,—the two sturdy men standing with their hands clasped in solemn pledge of the reformation of the one, and the helping sympathy of the other, above that Christmas-box in the cabin in the woods. ”

“ On this Christmas Eve, Laura and I send our best wishes to families across America as you gather in your homes to celebrate the holiday. Christmas is a time of joy and peace, and we hope the holiday season brings all of you happy reunions with families and friends and time to rest and reflect as you look forward to a new year. ”

“ With an entire month at one’s disposal in which to do one’s Christmas shopping and to tie up one’s Christmas packages and to plan for one’s Christmas dinner, the burden of preparation would not fall so suddenly or with such crushing force upon those who minister to us, and many who are now unable to rejoice in the Christmas celebration would be found joyfully singing the Christmas song. Much of the congestion and the crowding of the present would be rendered impossible, and Christmas would become what it ought to be,—a time of universal exultation, a season of world-wide gratitude and love. ”

“ Where cake, bread, and cheese are brought for your fees
To make you the longer stay;
At the fire to warm 'twill do you no harm,
To drive the cold winter away.
When Christmas's tide comes in like a bride
With holly and ivy clad,
Twelve days in the year much mirth and good cheer
In every household is had;
The country guise is then to devise
Some gambols of Christmas play,
Whereat the young men do best that they can
To drive the cold winter away. ”

“ What does anything matter but happiness? Christmas is coming! Every man, woman, and child is a hurrying Santa Claus. The first snow brings its strange hush, its strange sheltering pureness, and the sleigh-bells begin once more to jingle all about. During Christmas week hundreds of strings of colored lights are hung across the business streets. Wreaths and garlands of fragrant balsam fir, the very breath and expression of our countryside, are hung everywhere, over shop windows and doorways, in every house window, and on quiet mounds in the churchyard and cemetery. ”