Homegrown Christmas Quotes

Do you remember those times as a kid when you could hardly sleep on Christmas Eve because you were so excited about opening presents in the morning? That anticipation showed that you had no doubt. We should have an even greater anticipation of Jesus. If you are not "eagerly waiting for Him" (Heb. 9:28), something is off. Ask God to restore hope in your life. Not the kind of "hope" where you vaguely wish something would happen, but the kind of hope that anchors your soul (Heb. 6:19). Meditate on His promises and pray for faith. ~ Francis Chan

Do you remember in How the Grinch Stole Christmas! when the Grinch is alone on the mountain after plundering the Christmas of the Whos down below, and his heart swells to three times its normal size? That's the other thing that happens when you become a mom. You feel more deeply. You become capable of a raw, scary fullness of emotion that tenderizes the hardened muscle of the heart. And it endangers you. Because you feel for other people's suffering more than you used to, especially for the suffering of children, as if the love you bear for your child is so outsized that it can't be contained but splashes out into the world, your salty tears brimming the salty oceans. ~ Beth Ann Fennelly

Along with the violent tonic-clonic seizure, it turned out I had also been experiencing complex partial seizures because of overstimulation in my temporal lobes, generally considered to be the most "ticklish" part of the brain. The temporal lobe houses the ancient structures of the hippocampus and the amygdala, the parts of the brain responsible for emotion and memory. The symptoms from this type of seizure can range from a "Christmas morning" feeling of euphoria to sexual arousal to religious experiences. ~ Susannah Cahalan

Guthrie turned to see who his attacker was. And smiled when he caught her eye.
He had the most devilishly wolfish look about him -- a mixture of impending payback with a snowball and something a wee bit more intimate, like a tackle in the snow. But he wouldn't. Not in front of his clansmen. Not when they weren't courting. At least, she hoped not. ~ Terry Spear

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

The dinner was a huge production, with kids stashed in the den to eat off card tables like a collection of understudies who dreamed of one day breaking into the dining room. ~ Ann Patchett

God owns and controls all things. And there is nothing that he could give you for Christmas this year that would suit your needs and your longings better than the consolation of Israel and the redemption of Jerusalem, restoration for past losses and liberation from future enemies, forgiveness and freedom, pardon and power, healing the past and sealing the future. ~ John Piper

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. ~ Charles Dickens

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 don't need candlelight and fireside glow to make Christmas happen. Trees, ornaments, gifts, and all of it are splendid embellishments. Not necessary, but so very nice. It's Him ... It's priceless to discover the pleasure of His company ... May your home know something of all this glory during these days. ~ Jack W. Hayford

Christmas can be the end of emptiness and waywardness; The beginning of happiness and purposefulness. ~ William Arthur Ward

Doesn't he look just like a ring wraith?" she said thoughtfully.
"Are you kidding?" replied Cathy, "I most certainly won't be carol singing at your door this Christmas if you've got one of those ugly things hanging on it!"
"No, from Lord of the Rings," said Sue impatiently.
"I'm sorry," snorted Cathy, "I don't watch pornographic material."
"Have you never read a book?!" Sue snapped. "It's about a small man who travels through dangerous lands to drop a ring into a volcano, it's a classic."
"Does sound like a small man," she replied, "can't even face his marriage problems full on. ~ Paul Baxter

If I cried just now in church it wasn't for the reason that you thought. I've cried enough for that, heaven knows, but just then it was for something different. I felt so lonely. All those people, they have a country, and in that country, homes; to-morrow they'll spend Christmas Day together, father and mother and children; some of them, like you, went only to hear the music, and some have no faith, but just then, all of them, they were joined together by a common feeling; that ceremony, which they've known all their lives, and whose meaning is in their blood, every word spoken, every action of the priests, is familiar to them, and even if they don't believe with their minds, the awe, the mystery, is in their bones and they believe with their hearts; it is part of the recollections of their childhood, the gardens they played in, the countryside, the streets of the towns. It binds them together, it makes them one, and some deep instinct tells them that they belong to one another. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

When I was ten years old I was actually given McDonald's gift certificates for Christmas by my mom. Yes, my own mother. I guess she couldn't find gift certificates for a vending machine. I like to think it was her way of saying, "Merry Christmas. Here are some coupons for poison." McDonald's introduced the gift certificate prior to the obesity epidemic. I'm not saying that McDonald's gift certificates caused the obesity epidemic, but in retrospect, the timing is kind of suspicious. ~ Jim Gaffigan

At Christmas, 'It's a Wonderful Life' makes me cry in exactly the same places every time, even though I know it's coming. ~ Nicholas Lea

Like everyone in his right mind, I feared Santa Claus. ~ Annie Dillard

Mrs. Rimas cried at the mention of the wafer and the traditional Christmas blessing. God grant that we are all together again next year. ~ Ruta Sepetys

You've seen those pictures of couples kissing in front of a Christmas tree, or clasping hands on their wedding day, or holding a newborn baby between them-a snapshot of joy. But what do you really know about them? Just that at the second the shutter clicked, they loved each other. You have no idea what trials came before, or after. You don't know if one of them cheated, if they grew apart, if a divorce loomed on the horizon. You simply see that in one static moment, they were happy. ~ Jodi Picoult

The kids helped keep me together as well. One day they came in from playing after dinner, and I told them I was just completely exhausted by work and everything else. I said I'd take a shower as soon as I finished up; then we'd read and get ready for bed.
They warmed up some towels in the dryer while I was showering and had them waiting for me when I was done. They made some hot coffee--not really understanding that coffee before bed isn't the best strategy. But it was just the way I like it, and waiting on the bed stand. They turned down the bedcovers and even fluffed my pillows.
Most of the time, their gifts are unintentional.
Angel recently decided that, since the Tooth Fairy is so nice, someone should be nice to her. My daughter wrote a little note and left it under her pillow with some coins and her tooth.
Right?
The Tooth Fairy was very taken with that, and wrote a note back.
"I'm not allowed to take money from the children I visit," she wrote. "But I was so grateful. Thank you."
Then there was the time the kids were rummaging through one of Chris's closets and discovered the Christmas Elf.
Now everyone knows that the Christmas Elf only appears on Christmas Eve. He stays for a short while as part of holiday cheer, then magically disappears for the rest of the year.
"What was he doing here!" they said, very concerned, as they brought the little elf to me. "And in Daddy's closet!"
I called on the special brain cells paren ~ Taya Kyle

Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home. ~ G.K. Chesterton

But during the many happy hours that Cadpig was to sit watching it in the warm kitchen she never liked it quite so much as that other television, that still silent television she had seen on Christmas Eve when the puppies had rested so peacefully in that strange lofty building. She often remembered that building and wondered who owned it. Someone very kind she was sure for in front of every one of the many seats there had been a little carpet-eared puppy-sized dog-bed. ~ Dodie Smith

Senior look startled, but nodded. 'I love the smell of gun oil.' 'You like weapons?' She snorted. 'That's like asking if Santa likes Christmas." Resurrection Ch. 16 ~ Katie Reus

Ah, Cash?"
"Mmm?" he hummed.
"The mesh top is a little small."
"So? It's supposed to be."
"No, I mean small, small - I can't get it back over my head kind of small," I said quickly. "I feel like I'm going to pass out."
"Hang on. ~ Shaye Evans

I knew it," she snapped. "You're no different from all men. You're just another jerk pretending to be single! I didn't wanna wrap a lie into a Christmas present anyway. ~ Maha Erwin

She tossed a handful of snow at his face, then shrieked as the wind whipped it back into her own.
Red hooted. "Karma's a boomerang, sweetheart. Don't forget it. ~ Roxanne Snopek

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. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach! ~ Charles Dickens

It came without ribbions, It cames without tags, It came without packages, boxes, or bags. Christmas can't be bought from a store. Maybe Christmas means a little bit more ... ~ Dr. Seuss

Twas a cold Yuletide evening, and I wandered the stacks, shelving multiple titles that the patrons brought back. We toiled overtime at our library here, 'cause the powers that be cut our staffing this year. ~ David Davis

She wanted an Italian sports car - with the sport still in it. ~ Milton Berle

Human beings, when confronted with the strange and inexplicable, have an immediate instinct to get back to the accustomed and the normal. We do not hug our miracles close; we put them hastily away, preferring the commonplace to live with it. It is as if some compulsive hand wipes clean the wall on which the handwriting appeared. ~ Fulton Oursler

They played, not beautifully but deep, ignoring their often discordant strings and striking right into the heart of the music they knew best, the true notes acting as their milestones. On the poop above their heads, where the weary helmsmen tended the new steering-oar and Babbington stood at the con, the men listened intently; it was the first sound of human life that they had heard, apart from the brief Christmas merriment, for a time they could scarcely measure. ~ Patrick O'Brian

At other times, at the edge of a wood, especially at dusk, the trees themselves would assume strange shapes: sometimes they were arms rising heavenwards, , or else the trunk would twist and turn like a body being bent by the wind. At night, when I woke up and the moon and the stars were out, I would see in the sky things that filled me simultaneously with dread and longing. I remember that once, one Christmas Eve, I saw a great naked women, standing erect, with rolling eyes; she must have been a hundred feet high, but along she drifted, growing ever longer and ever thinner, and finally fell apart, each limb remaining separate, with the head floating away first as the rest of her body continued to waver ~ Gustave Flaubert

This is the way the wheel turns, coming at last to full circle, with wild as well as tame at he crib; lion and turtle-dove together an barnyard beasts lying down with the fox. For wild and tame are but two hlaves and here, where all begins and ends, everything must be whole.
And always, among the sleepers, there must be somebody waking - somewhere, someone, waking and watchful. Or what would happen to the world..? ~ P.L. Travers

I've been playing on Christmas for the last 10, 11, 12 years. So just got to get up early with the babies, and give them their toys and try to get a nap in and just come to play. ~ Shaquille O'Neal

God never gives someone a gift they are not capable of receiving. If he gives us the gift of Christmas, it is because we all have the ability to understand and receive it. ~ Pope Francis

People think the only time the earth is renewed is in spring. I find it's renewed around Christmastime when hard, old hearts are softened. When children's laughter drowns out anguish. When magic transforms the dull into something beautiful and sparkly. I find that Christmas time changes me ... from the inside out, and even for a moment fills me with youth and hope again. ~ Toni Sorenson

For our lives, incarnation means being focused on the spiritual and the eternal but bringing that focus deep into our life. … This is really the heart of the Christmas theological message: Live in two worlds that overlap but are distinct. Don't be materialistic, but don't sacrifice our ordinary physical life for any spiritual ideal. Be lowly and lofty. ~ Thomas Moore

The unfortunate thing about working for yourself is that you have the worst boss in the world. I work every day of the year except at Christmas, when I work a half day. ~ David Eddings

That's it? That's all that happens after you topple from grace? We lose our rubies and rations?" Marshall smirked. "Woe is me. ~ Sophie Avett

My Christmas was a sum total of the ministrations of adults, usually adults who wanted me to encourage my parents to buy something for me to consume and discard. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

Yes, I just wanted to see how you looked. And right now I'm tempted to whisk you away to a castle thousands of miles from here, just the two of us.

- "Be Mine This Christmas", Novel by Mary Lynn Cooper ~ Mary Lynn Cooper

Sometimes in the company of others I find a disagreeable spirit of competitiveness kicks in and each person is shamed into spending rather more than he would have wished. This is a historically established syndrome, of course. One Magus going to Bethlehem would probably have sprung for a box of After Eights. Three Magi on the same trip found themselves laden with gold, frankincense and myrrh and bitterly comtemplating their overdrafts. ~ James Hamilton-Paterson

The title of that great Christmas song was 'Boogie Woogie Santa Claus,' and no one ever heard of it. ~ Patti Page

We go from Malachi to Matthew in one page of our scriptures, but that one piece of paper that separates the Old Testament from the New Testament represents 400 years of history - 400 years where there wasn't a prophet, 400 years where God's voice wasn't heard. And that silence was broken with the cry of a baby on Christmas night. ~ Louie Giglio