Joy to the World: Book Quotes About Christmas and Winter Holidays

Let’s catch some holiday vibes with a collection of book quotes devoted to Christmas magic and winter holiday atmosphere. Have fun! *** I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. (Charles Dickens) *** Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better…

Let’s catch some holiday vibes with a collection of book quotes devoted to Christmas magic and winter holiday atmosphere. Have fun!

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I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
(Charles Dickens)

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Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmastime.

(Laura Ingalls Wilder)

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I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

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Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.

(Calvin Coolidge)

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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!

(Charles Dickens)

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He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.

(Roy L. Smith)

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One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don’t clean it up too quickly.

(Andy Rooney)

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The smells of Christmas are the smells of childhood.

(Richard Paul Evans)

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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 traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!

(Charles Dickens)

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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.

That doesn’t mean that the goals we have don’t count. They do, mostly because they cause us to go through the process and it’s the process that makes us wise, happy, or whatever. If we do things in the wrong sort of way, it makes us miserable, angry, confused, and things like that. The goal has to be right for us, and it has to be beneficial, in order to ensure a beneficial process. But aside from that, it’s really the process that’s important.

(Benjamin Hoff)

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Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.

(Peg Bracken)

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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.

(John Irving)

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Are you willing to stoop down and consider the needs and desires of little children; to remember the weaknesses and lonliness of people who are growing old; to stop asking how much your friends love you, and to ask yourself if you love them enough; to bear in mind the things that other people have to bear on their hearts; to trim your lamp so that it will give more light and less smoke, and to carry it in front so that your shadow will fall behind you; to make a grave for your ugly thougts and a garden for your kindly feelings, with the gate open? Are you willing to do these things for a day? Then you are ready to keep Christmas!

(Henry Van Dyke)

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Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.

(Washington Irving)

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Christmas, my child, is love in action.

(Dale Evans Rogers)

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Christmas Eve is my favorite… I think the anticipation is more fun than anything else. I kind of lost that. The idea that something – food, traditions, an arbitrary date on the calendar – can be special because we decide it should be. We make it special. Not just for ourselves, but for others.

(Kiersten White)

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Were I a philosopher, I should write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life need 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)

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One of the things that Christmas reminds us is that Jesus Christ was once a child.

(Hark Herald Sarmiento)

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Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused—in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened—by the recurrence of Christmas. There are people who will tell you that Christmas is not to them what it used to be; that each succeeding Christmas has found some cherished hope, or happy prospect, of the year before, dimmed or passed away; that the present only serves to remind them of reduced circumstances and straitened incomes—of the feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends, and of the cold looks that meet them now, in adversity and misfortune. Never heed such dismal reminiscences. There are few men who have lived long enough in the world who cannot call up such thoughts any day of the year. Then do not select the merriest of the three hundred and sixty-five for your doleful recollections, but draw your chair nearer the blazing fire—fill the glass and send round the song—and if your room be smaller than it was a dozen years ago, or if your glass be filled with reeking punch, instead of sparkling wine, put a good face on the matter, and empty it offhand, and fill another, and troll off the old ditty you used to sing, and thank God it’s no worse.

(Charles Dickens)

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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.

(Chris Van Allsburg)

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I know what I really want for Christmas.
I want my childhood back.
Nobody is going to give me that. I might give at least the memory of it to myself if I try. I know it doesn’t make sense, but since when is Christmas about sense, anyway? It is about a child, of long ago and far away, and it is about the child of now. In you and me. Waiting behind the door of or hearts for something wonderful to happen. A child who is impractical, unrealistic, simpleminded and terribly vulnerable to joy.

(Robert Fulghum)

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The perfect Christmas tree? All Christmas trees are perfect!

(Charles N. Barnard)

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Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart… filled it, too, with a melody that would last forever. Even though you grew up and found you could never quite bring back the magic feeling of this night, the melody would stay in your heart always – a song for all the years.

(Bess Streeter Aldrich)

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A Christmas gambol oft could cheer
The poor man’s heart through half the year.

(Walter Scott)

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At Christmas play and make good cheer,
For Christmas comes but once a year.

(Thomas Tusser)

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The rooms were very still while the pages were softly turned and the winter sunshine crept in to touch the bright heads and serious faces with a Christmas greeting.

(Louisa May Alcott)

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

(Joan Mills)

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I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.

(Harlan Miller)