Christmas card quotes & poems

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

The only gift is a portion of thyself.

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

I heard the bells on Christmas DayTheir old, familiar carols play,And wild and sweetThe words repeatOf peace on earth, good-will to men!

The time draws near the birth of Christ:The moon is hid; the night is still;The Christmas bells from hill to hillAnswer each other in the mist.Four voices of four hamlets round,From far and near, on mead and moor,Swell out and fail, as if a doorWere shut between me and the sound:Each voice four changes on the wind,That now dilate, and now decrease,Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.

Some say that ever ’gainst that season comesWherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,The bird of dawning singeth all night long;And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm;So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.

"I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world."

But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant 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. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!

HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.