Christmas morning, I’m going to open presents with my kids. I’m going to take pictures of them opening the presents. Then I’m going to come to the Staples Center and get ready to work.
Santa Claus has the right idea – visit people only once a year.
I think the people who are making Christmas-themed movies today feel that people are more cynical about Christmas. There’s more of an edge.
Christians get trees. Jews get bushes. To stay in good standing with the Tribe, you’ve got to refer to a Christmas tree as a Hanukkah bush.
People have nannies and big cars, and they want to go to Maui for Christmas. When there are those kind of stakes involved, people get ruthless.
For more than a decade, I led an organization that put on an elaborate Christmas program each December. It was a big production, with over 250 people participating in more than 20 performances. By the end of the season, everyone who participated was exhausted.
When you’re involved in those big-budget movies, there’s a lot of hype: ‘Oh this is gonna be a big hit!’ And ‘A Christmas Story’ wasn’t. It came and went and was a big disappointment at the box office.
You don’t want your jewelry to make you look fat. A lot of what’s out there now does – you just wind up looking like a Christmas tree.
I feel like I’ve got a pretty relatively extensive Christmas sweatshirt collection.
I’m a disorganized mess. My purse is gross: I once found a shoulder pad, string cheese, and a Christmas ornament in it!
I watched a lot of movies when I was younger and I remember, when I was seven years old, I asked my parents if I could have an agent for Christmas.
We play everybody’s Christmas records at our house, and sometimes you think, ‘I’m not gonna play my own record; I’d be embarrassed.’ But I’m gonna play our record this Christmas, because I love the songs!
I kind of have a uniform for office parties and Christmas parties. What I do is put on a basic tuxedo shirt with a solid navy or black tie, a tweed jacket, a red pocket square, and some sort of fancy shoe or velvet slipper.
Deep in my cortex, the year is divided into reading seasons. The period from mid-October to Christmas, for instance, is ‘ghost story’ time, while Jane Austen and P. G. Wodehouse pretty much own April and May.
I think that there are a lot of really beautiful Christmas carols, and then sometimes there are horrible renditions of them that are played to death in malls that make me sad. I try to avoid stores where they’re playing bad versions of Christmas songs on repeat.
One of the things that Marjorie has done has given me the joy of family. It’s a joy I never really knew. I spent a long time being lonely and hiding, and now, at Christmas, there’s this huge family. That’s something that’s very new to me. And very special.
The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.
I love the English league. I think it’s the best in the world, but I have a problem with Christmas and New Year’s Day because you have to play.
I’m not a fan of musicals at all, but I do think ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ is a very good. I always thought ‘Walk the Line’ was very good, too. I was in ‘Nowhere Boy.’ I played Paul McCartney. That was kind of musical – we did songs in that.
I have already done two Christmas films: ‘Elf’ and ‘Four Christmases.’ I guess I really am a sucker for Christmas. Both movies are really about the importance of family. I come from a brood of five kids, and it’s the one time of year we can all get together. It’s hands-down my favorite holiday.
I know ‘Hallelujah’ isn’t actually a Christmas song, but it has that cozy, haunting vibe that sounds like a winter’s night and belongs by a fire.
I really want a Christmas in New York one year, when it’s snowing. Like, it’s Christmas morning, and you have a fight with someone, and you run down the street, and it’s snowing, and you can’t find them.
I don’t know if anybody’s ever ready for another award season. It’s kind of like Christmas.
We have a host of English teachers in the family. My mum is an English teacher, and so are my dad, my aunt and my uncle. I have grown up with family writing competitions, and I can’t remember a birthday or Christmas present that didn’t include books.
Expectancy is the atmosphere for miracles.
We no longer sing and dance. We don’t know how to. Instead, we watch other people sing and dance on the television screen. Christmas, which was once a festival of active enjoyment, has turned into a binge of purely passive pleasures.
I remember driving to North Carolina when I was a little girl in a snowstorm to get down to my mom’s family in the Carolinas. There were chains on the car – it was the late sixties – and we were just singing in the car. Christmas carols.
I’m well-travelled so I can see places coming up. I went to St. Croix in the West Indies at Christmas and it had been hit by a really bad tornado. Values there have gone down but I guarantee they will be up again in eight years. So I’ll get in now while it’s cheap as chips.
We only open a couple of presents on Christmas morning; we’re all about the stockings – we even get them for the dogs!
I grew up as a photo nut. Every Christmas I would get a new camera. It’s a huge part of my life.
I’m Jewish and my wife isn’t so right now we’re literally decorating a Christmas tree with Jewish stars draped around it.
The Swedish Christmas is definitely unique, even throughout Scandinavia. Like Christmas everywhere, it’s a very family-centered holiday.
The whole Christmas story was probably a later addition to the gospel narratives, presented only by the authors of Matthew and Luke. Mark and John seem never to have heard of the manger in Bethlehem, the Massacre of the Innocents, the hovering star, the three wise men, and so forth.
Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.
I was doing a tour of the ‘Batman’ live stage production, and I challenged the cast to join me to run. One time, we were running in Switzerland just before Christmas, and it was heavy snow. Another time, we were running down the Seine in Paris on Christmas Day, and we all had Santa hats on.
In terms of the first Christmas when I met everybody, I went over to Nick’s grandfather’s house where they were having the big Christmas dinner, and they have this tradition of this thing called oyster stew.
I grew up in Morocco. I was born a Muslim, and, every year, I celebrated Christmas in a big white house in the country, halfway between Meknes and Fez.
Accounts of eating Christmas sweet potatoes baked in ashes and jackrabbit stewed with white flour dumplings are testaments to pioneer resilience and pleasure – and they help inspire my own best scratch cooking.
The next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel, Mississippi.
When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?
Christmas brings us great music: Everything from Handel’s ‘Messiah’ to ‘White Christmas,’ to ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.’
You have to remind kids to stay connected to the meaning of Christmas. Sometimes it takes a little bit of effort, but it’s so worth it.
And know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.
My Christmas present to myself each year is to see how much air travel can open up the world and take me to places as far from sheltered California and Japan as possible.
I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.
When you travel on Christmas, for you as the traveler – whether you’re in 1A or 39D – there is a mental state that you have to put yourself in: that you’re traveling at the busiest time of the year, and you’re going to take whatever comes your way.
All punk rockers hate Christmas.
One of my favorite traditions is that my sisters and I, we all wear the same pajamas. I’ve even still got some from when I was 6. Also, I’ll always remember cooking together in the kitchen and that no matter how busy our schedules are, we are all together for Christmas.
Chum was a British boy’s weekly which, at the end of the year was bound into a single huge book; and the following Christmas parents bought it as Christmas presents for male children.
At every Christmas, I fail to remember the daughters’ shoe sizes, and they are not growing, but grown. After ostensible hard thought about who needs what, I have failed to give good gifts; I have failed to receive good gifts.
My mom is a really good cook. I didn’t get the cooking gene, but she cooks this really amazing dinner every Christmas, and that’s always really fun.
Don’t send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals, when their cheery effect is needed.
The Earth reminded us of a Christmas tree ornament hanging in the blackness of space. As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine.
