Call a truce, then, to our labors -- let us feast with friends and neighbors, and be merry as the custom of our caste; for if faint and forced the laughter, and if sadness follow after, we are richer by one mocking Christmas past.
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The holiest of holidays are those Kept by ourselves in silence and apart The secret anniversaries of the heart.
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We are not anxious to grab the easiest dollar. The tourist dollar alone, unrestricted, is not worth the devastation of my people. A country where people have lost their soul is no longer worth visiting. We will encourage only small numbers of visitors whose idea of a holiday is not heaven or paradise, but participation in a different experience. We shall try to avoid the fate of some of our Caribbean neighbors who have ridden the tiger of tourism only to wind up being devoured by it. Large super-luxury hotels with imported management, materials, and values bring false prosperity with the negative side effects of soaring land prices that kill agriculture, polluted beaches, traffic jams, high rise construction that ravages hillsides and scalds the eyeballs - the very problems that the visitors want to forget.
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The holiest of all holidays are those Kept by ourselves in silence and apart; The secret anniversaries of the heart.
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And so we take a holiday, a vacation, to gain release from this bondage for a space, to stand back from the rush of things and breathe again. But a holiday is a respite, not a cure. The more we need holidays, the more certain it is that the disease has conquered us and not we it. More and more holidays just to get away from it all is a sure sign of a decaying civilization; it was one of the most obvious marks of the breakdown of the Roman empire. It is a symptom that we haven't learned how to live so as to re-create ourselves in our work instead of being sapped by it. A car should always be charging its battery as it runs. If it simply uses up without putting back, it has to go into dock to be recharged. It is not a sign that we are running particularly well if we are constantly needing to go into dock.
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The other day I bumped into Santa Claus. A good bump it was, too! I ought to have been arrested, for there is no open season on Santa Claus. But sometimes a first class collision is an exciting thing. It will knock the wind out of you, and it may knock an idea into your head. True, this Santa Claus did not have the white cotton whiskers or a red coat, but she was the real thing all right! Santa Claus in the flesh and plenty of it. A lady who looked like an animated Christmas tree with packages dangling from very limb and I bumped and spilled. As I was trying to pick up the packages she gasped out, Oh, I hate Christmas anyhow! It turns everything upside down. To which I said, That is just what it was made for. This lofty sentiment did not stop her dirty looks at all. But it is the big thing about Christmas.
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Midnight, and the clock strikes. It is Christmas Day, the werewolves birthday, the door of the solstice still wide enough open to let them all slink through.
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Holidays are in no sense an alternative to the congestion and bustle of cities and work. Quite the contrary. People look to escape into an intensification of the conditions of ordinary life, into a deliberate aggravation of those conditions: further from nature, nearer to artifice, to abstraction, to total pollution, to well above average levels of stress, pressure, concentration and monotony -- this is the ideal of popular entertainment. No one is interested in overcoming alienation; the point is to plunge into it to the point of ecstasy. That is what holidays are for.
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Please to put a nickel, please to put a dime. How petitions trickle in at Christmas time!
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A woman spent all Christmas Day in a telephone box without ringing anyone. If someone comes to phone, she leaves the box, then resumes her place afterwards. No one calls her either, but from a window in the street, someone watched her all day, no doubt since they had nothing better to do. The Christmas syndrome.
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There are some people who want to throw their arms round you simply because it is Christmas; there are other people who want to strangle you simply because it is Christmas.
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The only thing bad about a holiday is it is followed by a non-holiday.
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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
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I said I didn't want to spend most of my life in Holidays Inns, but I've checked and they've all been redecorated. They're marvelous places to stay and I've thought it over and that's where I'd like to be.
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This is the month, and this the happy morn, wherein the Son of heaven's eternal King, of wedded Maid and Virgin Mother born, our great redemption from above did bring.
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Washington
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A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.
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The purpose and cause of the incarnation was that He might illuminate the world by His wisdom and excite it to the love of Himself.
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If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work.
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How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, his precepts! O! 'tis easier to keep holidays than commandments
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If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work.
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How many observe Christ's birthday How few, his precepts O 'tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.
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Holidays are an expensive trial of strength. The only satisfaction comes from survival.
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If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work.
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Holidays are the best. I couldn't imagine being from a small family.
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I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up - they have no holidays.
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