Holidays

Christmas is the antithesis of Thanksgiving. Christmas is pretty much a man-made holiday.

Everybody loves a good Christmas song if you do it right.

It's Halloween, you can tell everyone you're going as your favorite Steampunck character.'I don't even know what that is!'Because your generation has no taste in speculative science fiction.

Christmas comes but once a year, starts in August ends in July.

It is not a Christmas tree!' said the King, so firmly that all the girls stopped jumping about. 'This is a house of mourning. It is nothing more than a tree. I thought it would look nice. Inside. That is all.

When I was five years old, I auditioned for the role of 'Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol.'.

Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer.... Who'd have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously?

My first real foreign holiday was my honeymoon 20 years ago, and we went to Bali. It was particularly special for that reason, I enjoyed it very much - I had packed music scores and a practice drum pad, suspecting that I would be completely bored, but actually they remained in my case.

I'm totally the 'decorate early, start listening to Christmas songs super early' guy. I've just always been that way.

How is it that everyone on this train has so much alcohol?'We always head to Canada at the beginning of the season,' she says taking her seat again. 'Their laws are much more civilized. Cheers.

Christmas, as a practicing Catholic child, was seen as a reward for lots and lots and lots of church.

Although it is pleasant to think about poison at any season, there is something special about Christmas, and I found myself grinning.

Christmas gives us the opportunity to pause and reflect on the important things around us - a time when we can look back on the year that has passed and prepare for the year ahead.

For this was Christmas, which had always been a time of magic, to him and to all the world.

No matter what else is going on, Christmas is my all-time favorite period in the year. It has a positive effect on me like very little else does, seasonally, that is.

Pecans are not cheap, my hons. In fact, in the South, the street value of shelled pecans just before holiday baking season is roughly that of crack cocaine. Do not confuse the two. It is almost impossible to make a decent crack cocaine tassie, I am told.

Christmas is a Christian holiday, and any self-respecting person of another religion should not celebrate a holiday that they don't believe in. Clearly, Christ is in the name of the holiday, so there should be a belief in Him.

I manage a toast to the Christmas treeand one to the sweet absurdityin the miracle of the verb to be.Lucky you, lucky me.

On Christmas Eve, we have a duck or roast pork with caramelised potatoes, braised red cabbage and gravy. For dessert, we have ris a l'amande, a rice pudding, and whoever gets the whole almond in it wins an extra present. Then we dance around the tree and sing carols.

I can't explain something I saw on holiday on Holy Island when I was about nine years old, but do you know what, it could have been my PE teacher dressed in a monk's habit. I have no idea. I'm not a ghost person... It doesn't mean there aren't unexplained things; I just don't think they're ghosts.