Writers about Christmas... (It's 12 days, so no I'm not done yet!)

• I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable 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." - Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
   
• "I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year." - Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
   
• "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, The Pickwick Papers (1836)
   
• "Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling."
  - Edna Ferber
   
• "I do like Christmas on the whole.... In its clumsy way, it does approach Peace and Goodwill. But it is clumsier every year."
  - E.M. Forster
   
• "Fail not to call to mind, in the course of the twenty-fifth of this month, that the Divinest Heart that ever walked the earth was born on that day; and then smile and enjoy yourselves for the rest of it; for mirth is also of Heaven's making."
  - Leigh Hunt
   
• "Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart."
  - Washington Irving
   
• "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
   
• "I hear that in many places something has happened to Christmas; that it is changing from a time of merriment and carefree gaiety to a holiday which is filled with tedium; that many people dread the day and the obligation to give Christmas presents is a nightmare to weary, bored souls; that the children of enlightened parents no longer believe in Santa Claus; that all in all, the effort to be happy and have pleasure makes many honest hearts grow dark with despair instead of beaming with good will and cheerfulness." - Julia Peterkin, A Plantation Christmas (1934)
   
• "Love came down at Christmas;
  Love all lovely, love divine;
  Love was born at Christmas,
  Stars and angels gave the sign."
  - Christina Rossetti
   
• "And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more."
  - Dr. Seuss
   
• "A Christmas gambol oft could cheer
  The poor man's heart through half the year."
  - Walter Scott
   
• "To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year."
  - E.B. White, "The Second Tree from the Corner" (1954)
   
• "Somehow, not only for Christmas
  But all the long year through,
  The joy that you give to others
  Is the joy that comes back to you.
  
  
  And the more you spend in blessing The poor and lonely and sad,
  The more of your heart's possessing
  Returns to you glad." - John Greenleaf Whittier
   
• "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." - Francis Pharcellus Church