A Family Christmas Quotes & Sayings

Live until you die." spoken by Nana Antonia in Steve Burt's story "Nana Antonia's Christmas Wish" in Family Circle Magazine. The story is also found as "Christmas Eve 12 Plus 97" in Steve' book, A Christmas Dozen. — Steve Burt

Time passes, as the novelist says. The single most useful trick of fiction for our repair and refreshment: the defeat of time. A century of family saga and a ride up an escalator can take the same number of pages. Fiction sets any conversion rate, then changes it in a syllable. The narrator's mother carries her child up the stairs and the reader follows, for days. But World War I passes in a paragraph. I needed 125 pages to get from Labor Day to Christmas vacation. In six more words, here's spring. — Richard Powers

Every year, like a good Catholic, I wait for Christmas. Putting up the lights, decorating the tree, making sweets and then unwrapping gifts on Christmas morning ... it's a tradition my family has followed since I was very little. — Malaika Arora Khan

Unburdening, she'd told Laurie about a vision she'd had when she was four or five years old. Unable to sleep on Christmas Eve, she'd tiptoed downstairs and seen a fat bearded man standing in front of her family's tree, checking items off a list. He wasn't wearing a red suit - it was more like a blue bus driver's uniform - but she still recognized him as Santa Claus. She watched him for a while, then snuck back upstairs, her body filled with an ecstatic sense of wonder and confirmation. As a teenager, she convinced herself that the whole thing had been a dream, but it had seemed real at the time, so real that she reported it to her family the next morning as a simple fact. They still jokingly referred to it that way, as though it were a documented historical event - the Night Meg Saw Santa. — Tom Perrotta

Christmas was just another workday, just as it had been growing up in Alabama. In a good year back then, little Robert got a handkerchief and an orange. One year his father fashioned a little cart - although come to think of it that was in the spring, not at Christmastime - and the children took turns being pulled around the yard by the family goat. Then he died. His father and the goat. — Robert M. Edsel

There are millions of people out there who live this way, and their hearts are breaking just like mine. It's okay to say, "My kid is a drug addict or alcoholic, and I still love them and I'm still proud of them." Hold your head up and have a cappuccino. Take a trip. Hang your Christmas lights and hide colored eggs. Cry, laugh, then take a nap. And when we all get to the end of the road, I'm going to write a story that's so happy it's going to make your liver explode. It's going to be a great day. — Dina Kucera

It's funny to think that Christmas - a time known for its joyful togetherness - can be the loneliest time of the year for some. — Giovanna Fletcher

Most murders are committed by someone who is known to the victim. In fact, you are most likely to be murdered by a member of your own family on Christmas day. — Mark Haddon

My family always makes a huge deal out of Christmas. — Jenna Morasca

Mom still has a huge, beautifully decorated Christmas tree. The whole family comes together after midnight mass and has the traditional plum cake and wine. We spend the night at mom's home, and in the morning we wake up and open the presents. In the afternoon, we sit down to have a traditional Christmas lunch. — Malaika Arora Khan

Most people who die in fires don't burn to death; they die from smoke inhalation that kills the respiratory system. that's why the fire service is going on and on about smoke detectors. These little ten-dollar gadgets are one of the truly wonderful inventions of man. The wake you up from a deep slumber so that you and your family and your dog or cat or whatever can get out of the house in time to live and call the fire department. If this sounds like a public service announcement, it is. If you don't have one, buy one today. They make great Christmas gifts. Plus they're cheap. Give a gift of love to a loved one you love. End of announcement. — Larry Brown

It's true, Christmas can feel like a lot of work, particularly for mothers. But when you look back on all the Christmases in your life, you'll find you've created family traditions and lasting memories. Those memories, good and bad, are really what help to keep a family together over the long haul. — Caroline Kennedy

Perhaps you'd like, you gentle fellow,
To hear what I'm prepared to say
On "kinfolk" and their implications?
Well, here's my view of close relations:
They're people whom we're bound to prize,
To honor, love, and idolize,
And following the old tradition,
To visit come the Christmas feast,
Or send a wish by mail at least;
All other days they've our permission,
To quite forget us if they please-
So grant them, God, long life and ease! — Alexander Pushkin

In my mind, she was Lebkuchen Spice - ironic, Germanic, sexy, and off beat. And, mein Gott, the girl could bake a damn fine cookie ... to the point that I wanted to answer her What do you want for Christmas? with a simple More cookies, please!
But no. She warned me not to be a smart-ass, and while that answer was totally sincere, I was afraid she would think I was joking or,
worse, kissing up.
It was a hard question, especially if I had to batten down the sarcasm. I mean, there was the beauty pageant answer of world peace, although I'd probably have to render it in the beauty pageant spelling of world peas. I could play the boo-hoo orphan card and wish for my whole family to be together, but that was the last thing I wanted, especially at this late date. — David Levithan

My family background is Mexican, and I was born in Chicago. It's pretty much family tradition every time we get together for Christmas and major holidays to sing. Our family time is centered around the food and a little bit of performing for one another. — Ailyn Perez

Like the Earth, the Web is a less appealing place than it used to be. If I want attitude and arguing and meanness and profanity and wrong information screamed at me as gospel, I'll get in a time machine and spend Christmas with my family in 1977. — J.R. Moehringer

A heartwarming tale of Christmas past that's chock full of all the wit and hilarity we admire in America's favorite humorist
Mark Twain. Carlo DeVito brings us back one hundred years to a magical time in Twain's family life, revealing a house that's brimming with love and laughter, as well as the profound heartbreaks of life. A Mark Twain Christmas only deepens our understanding and respect for both the man and his work. — Gilbert King

The librarian is a caricature of librarian - short white hair, horn-rimmed glasses, a bosom you could hide Christmas presents under and a New England-tight-ass face that looks like she hasn's taken a shit since her family came over on the Mayflower. — Bart Yates

As for my faith: I've become my father's son-that is, I've become the kind of believer that Pastor Merrill used to be. Doubt one minute, faith the next-sometimes inspired, sometimes in despair. Canon Campbell taught me to ask myself a question when the latter state settles upon me. Whom do I know who's alive whom I love? Good question-one that can bring you back to life. These days, I love Dan Needham and the Rev. Katherine Keeling; I know I love them because I worry about them-Dan should lose some weight, Katherine should gain some! What I feel for Hester isn't exactly love; I admire her-she's certainly been a more heroic survivor than I've been, and her kind of survival is admirable. And then there are those distant, family ties that pass for love-I'm talking about Noah and Simon, about Aunt Martha and Uncle Alfred. I look forward to seeing them every Christmas. — John Irving

And somehow Hallie thrived anyway--the blossom of our family, like one of those miraculous fruit trees that taps into an invisible vein of nurture and bears radiant bushels of plums while the trees around it merely go on living. In Grace, in the old days, when people found one of those in their orchard they called it the semilla besada--the seed that got kissed. Sometimes you'd run across one that people had come to, and returned to, in hopes of a blessing. The branches would be festooned like a Christmas tree of family tokens: a baby sock, a pair of broken reading glasses, the window envelope of a pension check. — Barbara Kingsolver

Christmas reminds us we are not alone. We are not unrelated atoms, jouncing and ricocheting amid aliens, but are a part of something, which holds and sustains us. As we struggle with shopping lists and invitations, compounded by December's bad weather, it is good to be reminded that there are people in our lives who are worth this aggravation, and people to whom we are worth the same. Christmas shows us the ties that bind us together, threads of love and caring, woven in the simplest and strongest way within the family. — Donald E. Westlake

Not only weight loss surgery is unnecessary but also it deprives human being a normal life. People after surgery would never be able to enjoy their food ever for the rest of their life whether it is Christmas or they are on their holidays or their child birthday or any other festival.
List of problems and complications after the weight loss surgery operation are endless as one may get additional problems such as Hernia, Internal Bleeding, Swelling of the skin around the wounds, etc. I wonder how many weight loss surgeons advice about weight loss surgery to their own family members. — Subodh Gupta

Mankind is a great, an immense family ... This is proved by what we feel in our hearts at Christmas. — Pope John XXIII

...I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday - the longer, the better - from the great boarding-school, where we are forever working at our arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest. As to going a visiting, where can we not go, if we will; where have we not been, when we would; starting our fancy away from our Christmas Tree! — Charles Dickens

A great thank you to my family, friends and to those who supported me through this year of 2016. I also want to give a massive thanks to all those who are diligently spreading my work like a wild fire all over the globe. May God continue to bless you and give you more ability to spread your wings like never before.
I love and I wish you all a great Christmas and a prosperous New Year. — Euginia Herlihy

The next day, eating a turkey sandwich with salt and mayonnaise, Rebecca decided Thanksgiving was the best holiday, although she had little to choose from: her family never celebrated Hanukkah but her father was militant about ignoring Christmas and insisted they spend December 25 eating Chinese takeout and going to the movies. — Anna Quindlen

Christmas is a time of sharing, and joy and grace. There's no better time to entertain family and friends than now. — Shelley Shepard Gray

For Christmas my family bought me a new Scrabble board (the one that swivels!) and cat treats. Am I eighty five? — Taylor Swift

Floyd arrived in the kitchen and leapt onto Casper's back, then proceeded to start biting his neck. I'm an only child with a smallish family who had never done Christmas in a big way, but there was something about having two male cats tenderly humping in the corner of the room that made the occasion a little more festive. — Tom Cox

People never like to talk about their slower relatives. I got a cousin, twice removed, got webs between his toes, ain't said one word his whole life. You never hear about him in the family newsletter that goes around every Christmas. Hell, nobody mentions me, either, if it comes to that. Families is funny about who they advertise. — Susan Juby

Just like our story, the original Christmas tales were stories of searching, not so much for the lost, as for the familiar. Mary and Joseph sought in Bethlehem- the home of their familial ancestry- a place to start their own family; the three kings from the East journeyed beneath the sentinel star to find the King of Kings; and the shepherds sought a child in a place most familiar to them: a manger. — Richard Paul Evans

You can't cure people of their character,' she read.
After this he had crossed something out then gone on, 'You can't even change yourself. Experiments in that direction soon deteriorate into bitter, infuriated struggles. You haul yourself over the wall and glimpse new country. Good! You can never again be what you were! But even as you are congratulating yourself you discover tied to one leg the string of Christmas cards, gas bills, air letters and family snaps which will never allow you to be anyone else. A forty-year-old woman holds up a doll she has kept in a cardboard box under a bed since she was a child. She touches its clothes, which are falling to pieces; works tenderly its loose arm. The expression that trembles on the edge of realizing itself in the slackening muscles of her lips and jaw is indescribably sad. How are you to explain to her that she has lost nothing by living the intervening years of her life? How is she to explain that to you? — M. John Harrison

I'm over the moon to be involved in the 'Doctor Who' Christmas special. I can't quite believe it as it's a part of the family tradition at the Jenkins household. I heard the news that I got the role on my 30th birthday and it was the best birthday present ever. — Katherine Jenkins

There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if could rent one for the holidays. When I was tiny we would by a real tree and stay up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just the right place for the special decorations. It seems like my parents gave up the magic when I figured out the Santa lie. Maybe I shouldn't have told them I knew where the presents really came from. It broke their hearts.
I bet they'd be divorced by now if I hadn't been born. I'm sure I was a huge disappointment. I'm not pretty or smart or athletic. I'm just like them- an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies. I can't believe we have to keep playacting till I graduate. It's a shame we just can't admit that we have failed at family living, sell the house, split up the money, and get on with our lives. Merry Christmas. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Our family's special holiday tradition is going over to my grandparent's house on Christmas morning. My grandma cooks a big breakfast, and I love hearing her tell old funny stories. — Caroline Sunshine

If I'm getting on an airplane or anywhere, really, I have a lunch box and stuff. It's a running joke with my friends and family - everyone gives me lunch boxes for Christmas. — Nikki Reed

It is madness," Brisbane said, and he laughed until tears gathered in his eyes. "It may be madness, but it is an entirely March Christmas," I told him. "And do not forget, this is only half the family. The rest will be here for Twelfth Night." But that is a tale for another time. — Deanna Raybourn

Why can't I remember our family Christmas, or a warm spring day, or anything that might have been pleasant? It is as though the filter of recall is itself altered, so that it blocks out everything but the darkest colors of the spectrum. — Caroline Kettlewell

After that I went home and Sally put what was left of me to bed; next day, being a Christian family, we saluted the happy morn with the Hell and Hades of a row because I wouldn't get up and go to early service, my sister being quite determined that even if I didn't get up. I shouldn't sleep. — Dion Fortune

My family has a Christmas tradition: Every year, they kill my mom. — James Aquilone

More and more people each year are going abroad for Christmas ... Fed up with the fact that commercial Christmas starts in October. Fed up with carols. Dreading the arrival of Christmas cards from people they have forgotten to send a card to. Unable to bear yet another family get-together with Auntie Mary puking up in the corner after sampling too much of the punch. You see in the airports the triumphant glitter in the eyes of people who are leaving it all behind, including the hundredth rerun of Miracle on 34th Street. — M.C. Beaton

This was not a good idea coming home for Christmas. I'm too old. Years ago, coming back from schools or trips, I always expected some sort of new perspective or fresh insight about the family on returning. That doesn't happen anymore-the days of revelation about my parents, at least, are over ... its time to move on. I think we'd all appreciate that. — Douglas Coupland

Wait a minute, look at them. Smiling and laughing. Just having a wonderful time, enjoying themselves to the fullest. Why shouldn't they? They deserve it. It's Christmas. Their Christmas. The best day I ever had was the day Karla found me and brought me here, to my home. Ryan, Kaley, Matt and yes, even Derek, are my family too. I'm treated so well I've lost perspective. Well, what do you expect, I am a dog after all. They always find the time to take me for walks, play with me in the yard, bring me to the vet, get me in out of the heat and cold, cuddle up with me before bedtime and even celebrate my birthday. Today is for them and not for me. The least I can do is to let them enjoy it without me getting in the way. But if this continues tomorrow there'll be hell to pay! Who am I kidding, it'll never happen. — Patrick Yearly

What good was a love affair that ended with the last train to the country, and Christmas presents that had to be given the day before Christmas because holidays were family times, and knowing that you would still be as alone as before because you could never telephone the man you loved when you needed him? — Rona Jaffe

Because you are..." Her words faded. What was he? She still remembered his kiss and her gaze dropped to his lips. Their relationship had changed. He used to be a friend, someone who shared a past with her and her family. But now, he was more than that. Every time she saw him, her heart did a strange flutter. She shook herself. He was an opponent. She should view him as she did Blaise. But she couldn't. She didn't want to. She longed to confide in him. But it was so dangerous. "Brilliant?" he encouraged her to continue. "Wise beyond my years?" His smile was contagious. Jaclyn rolled her eyes and turned. "And here I was going to say a good kisser. — Laurel O'Donnell

Isn't that the great thing about Christmas? You get a lot of respite, time to recharge your batteries, time with family without too much else happening anywhere else in the world, time to focus on the people you love and the activities that you enjoy, time to exercise, to read. — Wayne Swan

This is what my lifelong search for room to maneuver had come to: a box of water in a lightless, windowless nine-by-sixteen-foot room - afraid to leave my artificial womb, to go outside where I could only cause trouble, disappoint my family and myself. Best, I thought, to stay right here where I couldn't fuck anything up. And stay I would, day after day, sometimes three or four times on weekends, for hours at a time, just trying to keep my head below water. Connecticut - Christmas — Michael J. Fox

There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at last! — Charles Dickens

On Christmas, my family and I see a movie and go out for Chinese food. We don't celebrate Christmas in the traditional sense, in that we do not actually celebrate Christmas. — Eden Sher

Eating a huge home cooked Christmas dinner was his personal favorite. Evan would look around after each Christmas Day was done. There were empty dishes, and torn up wrapping paper on the ground. Monty was passed out on the couch stuffed with food. Evan would close his eyes and hear the day. He could feel the memories that were just made. — David Rangel

On Christmas morning when the beach is calling and the family's gathering and the presents are a mystery (or definitely feels book-shaped anyway), and after the splendour and celebration of Christmas Eve, we don't want Christmas Day to be an anticlimax. We've gifted our Oxfam goats or geese and bought our CWS calendars, and what we'd like, on Christmas Day, what we really want, is for things to be - perfect. Just like the old days. Something new, but also something familiar.
And that's what's so wonderful about the Christmas story, and why preachers penning their reflections approach with trepidation but also with joy: at Christmas, the news is all good. — Bronwyn Angela White

I came running down the stairs that morning, like it was Christmas. My parents were already up. In my family, presents never waited; they were there upon waking. Our family has a problem with what they called delayed gratification. We want what we want when we want it, and we always want it now. — Neal Shusterman

The rainy winter days passed quickly. Thanksgiving came and not long afterward Christmas vacation. Ramona missed Daisy, who went with her family to visit her grandparents. When she returned, the girls spent an afternoon dressing up Roberta in the clothes she had received for Christmas. Roberta was agreeable to having a dress pulled over her head, her arms stuffed into a sweater, her head shoved into caps. She enjoyed the girls' admiration. She was not so happy about a pair of crocheted slippers with ears and tails that looked like rabbits, a gift from Howie's grandmother, who enjoyed crocheting. Roberta did not care for the slippers. — Beverly Cleary

Christmas means a great deal to me. I was reared in a family that celebrated Christmas to some extent, but I married into a family that celebrated Christmas in a big way. And my wife always made a big thing of Christmas for the children. We have five children, and we had a terrific time at Christmas. — Billy Graham

Mandy was thinking back to when she was five years old, when she, her parents and Jud went outside before Christmas and had a snowball fight with the gray snow of Sydney Mines. "This is a wicked blast," Jud would say, and Mandy would snap photos with a 35mm disposable film camera, photos she wished very much she could step into sometimes. — Rebecca McNutt

I grew up in a reform Jewish family in St. Louis. Our idea of Judaism was no bar mitzvahs and a Christmas tree that had a skirt at the bottom embroidered with the names of my grandparents. — Danny Meyer

As part of my Christmas present I'd be giving chickens to a family in Nepal through the Heifer Foundation. I think they expanded my world when I was young to know sort of the other issues that were going on globally. — Serinda Swan

I can't tell you how scary it can be walking onto a movie and suddenly joining this family, it's like going to somebody else's Christmas dinner, everyone knows everyone, and you're there and you're not quite sure what you're supposed to be doing. — John Cleese

My countess tells me Genevieve has taken it into her head to remove to Paris. I suspect she wants to avoid being aunt-at-large, while her own situation admits of no change. We are Jenny's family, and Christmas is upon us. Harrison paints, he argues with her, and he has all his teeth. What say you, gentlemen?" "Paris reeks," Lord Kesmore said. "Harrison's scent is rather pleasant by comparison." "He smells of linseed oil," St. Just observed. "A point in his favor," Hazelton murmured, "from Lady Jenny's perspective." Westhaven — Grace Burrowes

Oh Come All Ye Faithful "Occum" Claus stood a head taller than most of the other men at the party. Like most of his crazy family, he wore a Santa suit, only the coat of his outfit was missing, exposing suspenders and a sleeveless white tank top. The man was heavily muscled and looked angry; a mixture of holiday cheer and a Navy SEAL having a really bad day. He was the picture that went along with the headline "Christmas Nightmare" or "Crazed Santa Attacks Orphans with Fire Ax. — Elizabeth Gannon

Joel Waldfogel is one of the smartest and funniest economists on the planet. I think of him every time I start to unwrap a present. Buy Scroogenomics for your friends and family. It makes the perfect Christmas gift. — Ian Ayres

One can never have enough socks," said Dumbledore. "Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books. — J.K. Rowling

Lights burn on the upper floors, traders and analysts letting commerce take precedence over family one more time in a desperate attempt to add to a Christmas bonus they won't have time to spend. — Nick Harkaway

Christmas is a celebration of Christ love for Humankind. And the love that bind us together as sacred family. — Lailah Gifty Akita

a family will visit constantly, daily or even twice a day. Then maybe every other day. Then just weekends. After months or years, the visits taper off, until it's just, say, birthdays and Christmas. Eventually, most families move away, as far as they can get. — Paul Kalanithi

You can't pull a gun just because a crazy person wants to talk to you. If I did that I'd never get through a family Christmas. — Marc MacYoung

If you've ever taken a sub, you'll know they have available every luxury item the weary traveller could ever wish to purchase. Drinks, food, perfumes, clothes, blankets, anything. These compartments weren't empty, but I doubt the weary traveller was really in the market for a selection of low and high powered pistols, assault rifles, armour piercing rounds and the variety of explosive devices on offer. Unless they were on the way to a Christmas family get-together. — G.R. Matthews

I just love family meetings. Very cozy, with the Christmas garlands round the fireplace and a nice pot of tea and a detective from Scotland Yard ready to arrest you. — Rick Riordan

I would like to go back and spend a Christmas with my family and myself when I was five years old and just see what that dynamic would be like. Observe it. I think it would be a magical gift. — Sharon Lawrence

Dear Lord, I've been asked, nay commanded, to thank Thee for the Christmas turkey before us ... a turkey which was no doubt a lively, intelligent bird ... a social being ... capable of actual affection ... nuzzling its young with almost human- like compassion. Anyway, it's dead and we're gonna eat it. Please give our respects to its family ... — Berkeley Breathed

Christmas is a holiday that we celebrate not as individuals nor as a nation, but as a human family. — Ronald Reagan

I'd felt obligated to get Ian a Christmas present. A chunk of coal sat in a brightly wrapped box under the tree, his name written in big bold letters on the front of it.
Ian might be family, but he still had been a very naughty boy this year. — Jeaniene Frost

Christmas is a box of tree ornaments that have become part of the family. — Charles M. Schulz

Since I was 15 years old I've never been able to spend Christmas, Halloween or Thanksgiving (with friends and family). This was the first time I was able to enjoy a Super Bowl. — Brendan Shanahan

Several years ago, I was creating a Christmas present for the family, a self-published cookbook featuring recipes my grandmother had collected and created over decades. While interviewing her for the biographical section, she began to talk about her courtship with my late grandfather. — Kristina McMorris

If you'd like to keep CHRIST in Christmas this year, I'd humbly suggest that instead of just posting about it as a status on Facebook, that perhaps you try to find a family in your neighborhood who could use a little help or pehaps donate to a local food bank anonomously. That's keeping CHRIST in Christmas! — Jose N. Harris

Christmas really is about all the cliches: health, happiness and love. A future with my family is the important thing ... to stay alive for them. — Sylvie Meis

A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!" Which all the family re-echoed. "God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all. — Charles Dickens

Hugh refused to leave the scene of the action. He seated himself on the top stair in the hall, banged his head against the railing a few times, just by way of uncorking the vials of his wrath, and then subsided into gloomy silence, waiting to declare war if more "first girl babies" were thrust upon a family already surfeited with that unnecessary article. — Kate Douglas Wiggin

The family tree of Christ startlingly notes not one woman but four. Four broken women - women who felt like outsiders, like has-beens, like never-beens. Women who were weary of being taken advantage of, of being unnoticed and uncherished and unappreciated; women who didn't fit in, who didn't know how to keep going, what to believe, where to go - women who had thought about giving up. And Jesus claims exactly these who are wandering and wondering and wounded and worn out as His. He grafts you into His line and His story and His heart, and He gives you His name, His lineage, His righteousness. He graces you with plain grace. Is there a greater Gift you could want or need or have? Christ comes right to your Christmas tree and looks at your family tree and says, I am your God, and I am one of you, and I'll be the Gift, and I'll take you. Take Me? — Ann Voskamp

Dave put a lot of thought into picking out the books his dad would like least. — Theric Jepson

When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon - all served with black beans and rice. It's festive but different. — Maya Angelou

Christmas can have a real melancholy aspect, 'cause it packages itself as this idea of perfect family cohesion and love, and you're always going to come up short when you measure your personal life against the idealized personal lives that are constantly thrust in our faces, primarily by TV commercials. — Dan Savage

They say that time is relative. I think the way it's treating me it's a distant one, maybe a bad uncle, and not welcome in my house this Christmas!! — Neil Leckman

Maybe the idea of the world as flat isn't a tribal memory or an archetypal memory, but something far older
a fox memory, a worm memory, a moss memory.
Memory of leaping or crawling or shrugging rootlet by rootlet forward, across the flatness of everything.
To perceive of the earth as round needed something else
standing up!
that hadn't yet happened.
What a wild family! Fox and giraffe and wart hog, of course. But these also: bodies like tiny strings, bodies like blades and blossoms! Cord grass, Christmas fern, soldier moss! And here comes grasshopper, all toes and knees and eyes, over the little mountains of the dust.
When I see the black cricket in the woodpile, in autumn, I don't frighten her. And when I see the moss grazing upon the rock, I touch her tenderly,
sweet cousin. — Mary Oliver

To do things, simple things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day ... was a man born just to endure those things and then die? — Charles Bukowski

If the moderns really want a simple religion of love, they must look for it in the Athanasian Creed. The truth is that the trumpet of true Christianity, the challenge of the charities and simplicities of Bethlehem or Christmas Day never rang out more arrestingly and unmistakably than in the defiance of Athanasius to the cold compromise of the Arians. It was emphatically he who really was fighting for a God of Love against a God of colourless and remote cosmic control; the God of the stoics and the agnostics. It was emphatically he who was fighting for the Holy Child against the grey deity of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He was fighting for that very balance of beautiful interdependence and intimacy, in the very Trinity of the Divine Nature, that draws our hearts to the Trinity of the Holy Family. His dogma, if the phrase be not misunderstood, turns even God into a Holy Family. — G.K. Chesterton

Ugster vinyl pumps, Partridge Family records, plastic daisy jewelry, old postcards ... It's a magpie Christmas market. — Francesca Lia Block

Christmas comes during a season when the Earth is in its darkest time. It's a holiday for the family and for everyone. — Melissa Etheridge

I am always amazed by the novel angles that people come up with for kids' Christmas books. Even if a family is not religious, who could resist, say, "Olive, the Other Reindeer," about Olive the dog who thinks the song refers to her and heads for the North Pole to help Santa out? — Jabari Asim

When I grew up, we always had our chickens, and we ate our eggs, and we ate our chickens. The family always had a pig, and we would kill it at Christmas and eat it for three or four months afterwards. — Isabella Rossellini

My wife and I were shopping for the whole family. In the music department my wife said, "Let's get your nephew a set of drums. That's what your brother did to us last year." — Milton Berle

doubted that it was the whole truth but there really wasn't anything she could do about it. "I'm just really disappointed, Ted," she said sadly. "You're the only family I have and now I'm not even going to get to spend Christmas with you. It's not fair." "I really am sorry. I thought I was doing a good thing." For who? She sighed. "Maybe — Samantha Chase

I hear it was the fact that the Brennans had a hellfireanddamnation preacher runnin' their family back in Prohibition days and you Gallaghers were runnin' moonshine to get by and got caught. Your family blamed the Brennans for rattin' you out, and that started a feud," Rosalie said. — Carolyn Brown

As I wrote 'The Christmas Lamp' I realized that tradition is priceless, whether you have a small family, a large family, or no family.
Tradition doesn't have to be logical; it only has to emphasize the light of Christ and his everlasting love. — Lori Copeland

I love my family but my family - they're the type of people that never let you forget anything you ever did ... I was in the first grade Christmas play - I'm playing Mary. Now, during the course of the play, I dropped the baby Jesus ... They still talk about this. I go to my family reunion, and one of my cousins just had a baby. So I'm like, 'Oh, that's a cute little baby. Let me hold the baby ... ' And my aunt runs over, 'Don't you give her that baby! You know she dropped the baby Jesus!' — Wanda Sykes

I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me. The thought of being a lawyer or a councilman or an engineer, anything like that, seemed impossible to me. To get married, to have children, to get trapped in the family structure. To go someplace to work every day and to return. It was impossible. To do things, simple things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day ... was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep. — Charles Bukowski

The saddest thing is an old bag lady, freezing to death in the snow on Christmas Eve, and the last thing she sees is a family in a nice warm diner getting beheaded by the Taliban. — Chris Onstad

My Christmas tree glimmered with lights, ornaments, and tinsel. Though such holiday trimmings weren't in vogue any longer, I loved them. I pulled every box of family decorations from the attic and glamored the tree until it looked like a "fancy woman in a cheap brothel" as my aunt Loulane would say. — Carolyn Haines

Go home, talk about it together. Bake Christmas cookies and crap. Then tell me what you want to happen. Know that I'm yours. My loyalty, my soul is yours no matter what you decide. Crap, you can shoot me in the back, and I'll never want anything but to be around you hookers."
Blake stood and shook his head. "Nah, I don't need time. I appreciate the place in Hawaii, and it would be great to go to - maybe for a vacation sometime? But I'm here. I'm not leaving you. You're my family. — Debra Anastasia