WHAT CHRISTMAS MEANS...

Christmas is sights, especially the sights of Christmas reflected in the eyes of a child.

William Saroyan

Christmas - that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance - a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.

Augusta E. Rundel

The Christmas spirit - love - changes hearts and lives.

Pat Boone

Christmas is forever, not for just one day, for loving, sharing, giving, are not to put away like bells and lights and tinsel, in some box upon a shelf. The good you do for others is good you do yourself.

Norman Wesley Brooks

For many of us, sadly, the spirit of Christmas is "hurry". And yet, eventually, the hour comes when the rushing ends and the race against the calendar mercifully comes to a close. It is only now perhaps that we truly recognize the spirit of Christmas. (...) With all its temporal confusion, it may just help us to see that by contrast, Christmas itself is eternal.

Burton Hillis

The earth has grown old with its burden of care,

But at Christmas it always is young.

Phillips Brooks

Christmas is a holiday that persecutes the lonely, the frayed, and the rejected.

Jimmy Cannon

Christmas is the gentlest, loveliest festival of the revolving year - and yet, for all that, when it speaks, its voice has strong authority.

William John Cameron

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

Dr. Seuss

Christmas is a bridge. We need bridges as the river of time flows past. Today's Christmas should mean creating happy hours for tomorrow and reliving those of yesterday.

Gladys Tabor

Christmas is for children. But it is for grown-ups too. Even if it is a headache, a chore, and nightmare, it is a period of necessary defrosting of chill and hide-bound hearts.

Lenora Mattingly Weber

Christmas is the time to let your heart do the thinking.

Patricia Clafford

Christmas is, of course, the time to be home - in heart as well as body.

Garry Moore

Christmas is not as much about opening our presents as opening our hearts.

Janice Maeditere

My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that?

Bob Hope

Christmas is the happiness that lights our children's eyes.

Christmas is a song of bells ringing through the skies.

Christmas is a time of peace, of contentment deep within,

A time of love and silent hope that years will never dim.

Sherrill Thompson

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

Norman Vincent Peale

Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind.

Mary Ellen Chase

Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world - stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death - and that the blessed life which began in Bethlehem nineteen hundred years ago is the image and brightness of the Eternal Love? Then you can keep Christmas.

Henry Van Dyke

Christmas is the day that holds all time together.

Alexander Smith

Christmas has lost its meaning for us because we have lost the spirit of expectancy. We cannot prepare for an observance. We must prepare for an experience.

Handel H. Brown

For the spirit of Christmas fulfils the greatest hunger of mankind.

Loring A. Schuler

Best of all, Christmas means a spirit of love, a time when the love of God and the love of our fellow men should prevail over all hatred and bitterness, a time when our thoughts and deeds and the spirit of our lives manifest the presence of God.

George F. McDougall

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

Christmas is most truly Christmas when we celebrate it by giving the light of love to those who need it most.

Ruth Carter Stapleton

Christmas is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it's Christmas.

Dale Evans

Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

Stephen Fry

This time of year means being kind

to everyone we meet,

To share a smile with strangers

we may pass along the street.

Betty Black

Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone.

Charles Schulz

Christmas is based on an exchange of gifts: the gift of God to man - his unspeakable gift of his son Jesus; and the gift of man to God - when we present our bodies as a living sacrifice and, like the Macedonians, first give ourselves to God. No one has kept or can keep Christmas until he has had a part in this two-way transaction.

Vance Havner

To celebrate the heart of Christmas is to forget ourselves in the service of others.

Henry C. Link

Let us remember that the Christmas heart is a giving heart, a wide open heart that thinks of others first.

George Matthew Adams

Christmas is a time when you get homesick - even when you're home.

Carol Nelson

It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.

William Turner Ellis

Christmas is the keeping-place for memories of our innocence.

Joan Mills

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.

Hamilton Wright Mabi

Christmas is a day of meaning and traditions, a special day spent in the warm circle of family and friends.

Margaret Thatcher

This is Christmas: not the tinsel, not the giving and receiving, not even the carols, but the humble heart that receives anew the wondrous gift, the Christ.

Frank McKibben

As long as we know in our hearts what Christmas ought to be, Christmas is.

Eric Sevareid