Christmas

I love the book A Christmas Carol. I read it every year and wish I could just run and dance with wild abandon and Christmas joy as Scrooge does. This year I underlined parts that I really liked, and thought I'd make a list of some of those parts here. So here you go-a toast to Christmas cheer.

'There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say'

'Christmas time... [is 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.'

'oh!...Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunities missed!...Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all, my business...Why did I walk through crowds of fellowbeings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!'

'The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.'

'I told you these were shadows of the things that have been...That they are what they are, do not blame me!'

'Come in! and know me better, man!'

'As good as gold... and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.'

'Man, if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child.'

'But they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time.'

'And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.'

'But being thoroughly good-natured, and not much caring what they laughed at, so that they laughed at any rate, he encouraged them in their merriment.'

'For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when its mighty Founder was a child himself.'

'Now it wasn't for the sake of anything he might be able to do for us, so much as for his kind way, that this was quite delightful.'

'I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.'

'Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!'

'I don't know what to do! ..I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world!'

'but he knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it.'

'His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him...and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!'

Merry Christmas!