Meaning Of Christmas Quotes

Christmas means the birth of a new beginning, a new mind, and a new life. ~ Debasish Mridha

If you want to experience the true meaning of Christmas, give something to someone who can offer nothing in return. ~ Toni Sorenson

The purpose and cause of the incarnation was that
He might illuminate the world by His wisdom
and excite it to the love of Himself. ~ Peter Abelard

I may plan to make Christ the center of Christmas, but when I wait until December to focus on celebrating His birthday, I become entangled in Christmas lights, holiday baking, and festive engagements, often wondering if I've experienced the illusive "true meaning" of Christmas. ~ Ann Marie Stewart

It was a very costly love. A very powerful love. A very rugged, painful love. The meaning of Christmas is the celebration of this love. "God so loved ... " And wonder of wonders, God gives this costly love to an undeserving world of sinners, like us. ~ John Piper

The service had reminded her of the meaning of Christmas and given her a sense of peace. It had also reminded her of the baby she carried and the hope that having a child brought into her life. Did the past really matter? Not if she didn't let it, she decided. ~ Brenda Novak

Thus says the Lord: the meaning of Christmas is that what is good and precious in your life need never be lost, and what is evil and undesirable in your life can be changed. The fears that the few good things that make you happy are slipping through your fingers, and the frustrations that the bad things you hate about yourself or your situation can't be changed - these fears and these frustrations are what Christmas came to destroy. It is God's message of hope this Advent that what is good need never be lost and what is bad can be changed. ~ John Piper

I was born with a heart that was two sizes too small, but when I saw my baby, it was like the Grinch discovering the true meaning of Christmas. ~ Jim Gaffigan

How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food and beer conglomerates. Who'd have ever guessed product consumption, popular entertainment and spirituality would mix so harmoniously. It's a beautiful world, all right. ~ Bill Watterson

Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer ... Who'd have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously? ~ Bill Watterson

I'm into the true meaning of Christmas - Faith, Family, and Facial hair. ~ Jase Robertson

Of all times, it is Christmas when we must surely realize that there can be no true worship of Him who is the Christ without giving of ourselves. At this season let us, each one, reach out a little more generously in the spirit of the Christ. It is not enough to give toys and baubles. It is not enough to give alms to those in need. That is important, yes. But it is also important that we give of ourselves with our alms. May the real meaning of Christmas distill into our hearts, that we may realize that our lives, given us by God our Father, are really not our own, but are to be used in the service of others. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

We tend to focus our attention at Christmas on the infancy of Christ.
The greater truth of the holiday is His deity.
More astonishing than a baby in the manger is the truth that this promised baby
is the omnipotent Creator of the heavens and the earth! ~ John F. MacArthur

We're raising our girls to understand the real meaning of Christmas, and to know that it's most important to have Christmas in your heart. We go to our local mall and donate toys, and we say prayers for all the people in the world who might not be as lucky as we are. ~ Faith Hill

All the Christmas presents in the world are worth nothing without the presence of Christ. ~ David Jeremiah

My dad likes to recite the story of 'Pablo the Donkey' before dinner to teach us the real meaning of Christmas. Every year, it's the same; every year, we cringe! ~ Mallory Jansen

I think we've taken the meaning of Christmas out. People don't stop and think about Jesus or the birth of Jesus. When they think of Christmas, they think of Santa Claus and - for the children, and they think of giving gifts and out-giving the next person of spending their time looking for the right thing for somebody who has everything. ~ Billy Graham

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. ~ Caroline Kennedy

God walked down the stairs of heaven with a Baby in His arms. ~ Paul Scherrer

Rejoice, that the immortal God is born, so that mortal man may live in eternity. ~ Jan Hus

Christmas is supposed to be this time when everyone is nice to one another and forgives one another and all that, but the true meaning of Christmas is presents. And in the real world, Santa's not fair. Rich kids get everything and poor kids get secondhand crap their parents bust their asses to afford. It costs money just to sit on Santa's lap. ~ Holly Black

Harman was right: those pictures were worse. But, leaving aside the fact that photographs of death and nudity, however newsworthy, don't get much play in the press, the power of an image does not necessarily reside in what it depicts. A photograph of a mangled cadaver, or of a naked man trussed in torment, can shock and outrage, provoke protest and investigation, but it leaves little to the imagination. It may be rich in practical information while being devoid of any broader meaning. To the extent that it represents any circumstances or conditions beyond itself, it does so generically. Such photographs are repellent in large part because they have a terrible reductive sameness. Except from a forensic point of view, they are unambiguous, and have the quality of pornography. They are what they show, nothing more. They communicate no vision and, shorn of context, they offer little, if anything, to think about, no occasion for wonder. They have no value as symbols.

Of course, the dominant symbol of Western civilization is the figure of a nearly naked man being tortured to death⁠ - or more simply, the torture implement itself, the cross. But our pictures of Christ's savage death are the product of religious imagination and idealization. In reality, with his battered flesh scabbed and bleeding and bloated and discolored beneath the pitiless Judean desert sun, he must have been ghastly to behold. Had there been cameras at Calvary, would twenty centuries of believers have ~ Philip Gourevitch

Find out what faith is and how you can put it into practice.
Learn how to pray, and do it.
Discover what pride is, and get rid of it.
Develop a self-concept that is adequate and accurate.
Clarify your values.
Identify your talents.
Probe the fact, meaning, and use of your sexuality.
Face the fact that you engage in self-deception.
Reflect on truth that you are made in the image of God.
Use your spiritual gift.
Clear your conscience.
Feel deeply.
Enjoy life.
Face death.
Treat your body right.
Conquer the flesh.
Depend on the Holy Spirit.
Be humble. ~ J. Grant Howard

The helper [Eve, Genesis 2:18] is not a helper to til the soil or name the animals. The helper is the helper in the terms of the man's very identity. Man does not identify with the other living beings in an essential way. This non-identification reveals that his search goes farther than consciousness, self-awareness, self-knowledge or self-determination. The body reveals meaning and identity and includes the search outside himself in openness to another in relation. (p. 91) ~ J. Brian Bransfield

Let us thank God for having made us this gift of death, so that life is to have meaning; of night, that day is to have meaning; silence, that speech is to have meaning; illness, that health is to have meaning; war, that peace is to have meaning. Let us give thanks to Him for having given us weariness and pain, so that rest and joy are to have meaning. Let us give thanks to him, whose wisdom is infinite. ~ Amin Maalouf

Alan had never been stabbed or shot or punctured or broken. Were scars the best evidence of living? If we have not survived something, and thus were certain that we'd lived, we could scar ourselves, couldn't we? ~ Dave Eggers

But seat-back video screens and the hard frames that surround them pose a safety challenge, partly because of the potential for injuries caused by head strikes, and partly because the computers and the electrical systems that serve them have to be both fireproof and fully isolated from the plane's - so that crossed wires in somebody's seat don't allow a ten-year-old playing a video game to suddenly take control of the cockpit. Largely as a result, in-flight entertainment systems are almost unbelievably expensive. The rule of thumb, I was told, is "a thousand dollars an inch" - meaning that the small screen in the back of each economy seat can cost an airline ten thousand dollars, plus a few thousand for its handheld controller. ~ Anonymous

I am atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there a meaning to all of this? When I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them. ~ Mark Haddon

What started Baby Jesus growing in Mary's tummy was an angel zoomed down, like a ghost but a really cool one with feathers. Mary was all surprised, she said, "How can this be?" and then, "OK let it be." When Baby Jesus popped out of her vagina on Christmas she put him in a manger but not for the cows to chew, only to warm him up with their blowing because he was magic. ~ Emma Donoghue

We read about the name Jesus was given at his birth; Immanuel, meaning "God with us". This God wasn't content with dwelling in fiction, this God wasn't content living with the seraphim and this God wasn't content with bulls and goats anymore. This God wanted to dwell with you, with all of your mess, with all of your failures with all the dirtiness that is you; he wanted to sit with you. Here's the amazing thing, God doesn't care if you're a catholic, a Lutheran, Post modern or Emergent; he wants to sit with you. ~ Ricky Maye

She is convinced that when language dies, out of carelessness, disuse, indifference and absence of esteem, or killed by fiat, not only she herself, but all users and makers are accountable for its demise. In her country children have bitten their tongues off and use bullets instead to iterate the voice of speechlessness, of disabled and disabling language, of language adults have abandoned altogether as a device for grappling with meaning, providing guidance, or expressing love. ~ Toni Morrison

If men are always more or less deceived on the subject of women, it is because that they forget that they and women do not speak altogether the same language, and that words have not the same weight or the same meaning for them, especially in questions of feeling. Whether from shyness or precaution or artifice, a woman never speaks out her whole thought, and moreover what she herself knows of it is but a part of what it really is. Complete frankness seems to be impossible to her, and complete self-knowledge seems to be forbidden her. If she is a sphinx to us, it is because she is a riddle of doubtful meaning even to herself. She has no need of perfidy, for she is mystery itself. A woman is something fugitive, irrational, indeterminable, illogical, and contradictory. A great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her, and a good deal of prudence exercised with regard to her, for she may bring about innumerable evils without knowing it, capable of all kinds of devotion, and of all kinds of treason, "monstre incompréhensible,' raised to the second power, she is at once the delight and the terror of men. ~ Henri-Frédéric Amiel

I came to realize that this was about more than not offering up what some of his opponents craved - the picture of the angry black man, or the lectures on race that fuel a sense of grievance among white voters. Obama also didn't want to offer up gauzy words to make well-meaning white people feel better. The fact that he was a black president wasn't going to bring life back to an unarmed black kid who was shot, or alter structural inequities in housing, education, and incarceration in our states and cities. It wasn't going to change the investment of powerful interests in a system that sought to deny voting rights, or to cast people on food stamps working minimum wage jobs as "takers," incapable of making it on their own. The "last person who ever thought that Barack Obama's election was going to bring racial reconciliation and some "end of race" in America was Barack Obama. That was a white person's concept imposed upon his campaign. I know because I was once one of them, taking delight in writing words about American progress, concluding in the applause line "And that is why I can stand before you as president of the United States." But he couldn't offer up absolution for America's racial sins, or transform American society in four or eight years. ~ Ben Rhodes

The ability of humans to read meaning into patterns is the most defining characteristic we have. ~ Eleanor Catton

What one does in the studio is to pose a series of problems to oneself. I've got to look for some deeper meaning, for some reason for this thing to be in the world. There's enough stuff in the world. ~ Anish Kapoor

What would have been the good of my being plunged into a lot of naked suffering and emotional crisis without any prayer, any Sacrament to stabilize and order it, and make some kind of meaning out of it? ~ Thomas Merton

This faith [in majoritarian democracy] may prevent one from recognizing that the more numerous the people are whom one tries to "represent" through the legislative process and the more numerous the matters in which one tries to represent them, the less the word "representation" has a meaning referable to the actual will of actual people other than that of the persons named as their "representatives. ~ Bruno Leoni

Black Magick is the process of self-transformation through an antinomian initiatory structure, Black meaning the hidden wisdom, power of darkness, dreams and staging the reality you wish and Magick being the process to ascend, become immortal in spirit. ~ Michael W. Ford

The problem, however, eventually became evident: to make science the arbiter of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hate, meaning - to consider a world that is self-evidently not the world we live in. That's not to say that if you believe in meaning, you must also believe in God. It is to say, though, that if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, therefore, life itself doesn't have any. In other words, existential claims have no weight; all knowledge is scientific knowledge. Yet ~ Paul Kalanithi

Acting requires a creative and compassionate attitude. It must aim to lift life up to a higher level of meaning and not tear it down or demean it. The actor's search is a generous quest for that larger meaning. That's why acting is never to be done passively. ~ Stella Adler

He was always seeking for a meaning in life, and here it seemed to him that a meaning was offered; but it was obscure and vague ... He saw what looked like the truth as by flashes of lightening on a dark, stormy night you might see a mountain range. He seemed to see that a man need not leave his life to chance, but that his will was powerful; he seemed to see that self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion; he seemed to see that the inward life might be as manifold, as varied, as rich with experience, as the life of one who conquered realms and explored unknown lands. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

In the old days, Christmas lights had come in short strings that were wired serially. If a single bulb burned out or even just loosened in its socket, the circuit was broken and the entire string went dark. One of the season's rituals for Gary and Chip had been to tighten each little brass-footed bulb in a darkened string and then, if this didn't work, to replace each bulb in turn until the dead culprit was found. (What joy the boys had taken in the resurrection of a string!) By the time Denise was old enough to help with the lights, the technology had advanced. The wiring was parallel, and the bulbs had snap-in plastic bases. A single faulty light didn't affect the rest of the community but identified itself instantly for instant replacement ... ~ Jonathan Franzen

The real story of Nader, Shahed, and other women who live as men in Afghanistan is not so much about how they break gender norms or what they have become by doing that. Rather, it is about this: Between gender and freedom, freedom is the bigger and more important idea. In Afghanistan as well as globally. Defining one's gender becomes a concern only after freedom is achieved. Then a person can begin to fill the word with new meaning. ~ Jenny Nordberg

Prevention vs. Promotion Focus

Anxiety is often associated with having a prevention focus. This means being focused on preventing bad things from happening. In contrast, promotion focus means being focused on reaching for new opportunities and rewards. While most people have a dominant focus, it's possible to be high in both types, meaning you're naturally very concerned both with avoiding mistakes and harm and with reaching for opportunities. This can result in a constant sense of pushing forward and pulling back. ~ Alice Boyes

We look to the accumulation of sensory pleasures to give our lives meaning. We have the ability now to consume anything we want and this capacity far exceeds our actual needs. With so much at our fingertips, a kind of gluttony pervades our mind-sets. ~ Mark Epstein

And we will meet in the woods far far away from this hustle and bustle... and share love and sunshine. ~ Avijeet Das

I find focusing clearly on the problem is the first step to seeing a solution. The problem is (a) the insane amount of time spent raising money from (b) a freakishly tiny proportion of America. Basically .05% are the "relevant funders" of campaigns, meaning candidates can't help but be overly sensitive to the views of that tiny fraction relative to the rest of us. IF that's the problem, THEN the solution is to spread the funders out: to increase the range of us who are the relevant funders of elections, through schemes like vouchers or coupons given to every voter. ~ Lawrence Lessig

Maybe that's what growing up means, in the end - you go far enough in the direction of - somewhere - and you realise that you've neutered the capacity of the term home to mean anything. [ ... ] We don't get an endless number of orbits away from the place where meaning first arises, that treasure-house of first experiences. What we learn, instead, is that our adventures secure us in our isolation. Experience revokes our licence to return to simpler times. Sooner or later, there's no place remotely like home. ~ Gregory Maguire

I was raised in a religion that hardly ever acknowledges angels, and I never even heard of Michael until I was older. Angels were relegated to Christmas and Valentines, so I didn't really have any kind framework to understand this, even though my parents were open to things like intuition and psychic abilities and manifesting. ~ Doreen Virtue

Life [had] replaced logic. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

With the signs of the Disc zodiac. There were sixty-four of them, from Wezen the Double-headed Kangaroo to Gahoolie, the Vase of Tulips (a constellation of great religious significance whose meaning, alas, was now lost). ~ Terry Pratchett

What untold hosts of voices there are which call upon one and summon him to reawakening. He remembers, and is himself once again, moving cleanly on his way. Some measure of simplicity again informs the steps he takes; he becomes content to be himself and finds fragrance in the air. He may eat his food in peace. He does not wish to obviate tomorrow's work. He is willing to consider: not to suppose a case, but to take the case that is. He becomes patient. Things invite him to adequate himself to their infinity. The passage of time is now not robbery or show; it is the meaning of the present ever completing itself. ~ Henry Bugbee

So, we need to delegitimize the nuclear weapon, and by de-legitimizing ... meaning trying to develop a different system of security that does not depend on nuclear deterrence. ~ Mohamed ElBaradei

The first inkling of this notion had come to him the Christmas before, at his daughter's place in Vermont. On Christmas Eve, as indifferent evening took hold in the blue squares of the windows, he sat alone in the crepuscular kitchen, imbued with a profound sense of the identity of winter and twilight, of twilight and time, of time and memory, of his childhood and that church which on this night waited to celebrate the second greatest of its feasts. For a moment or an hour as he sat, become one with the blue of the snow and the silence, a congruity of star, cradle, winter, sacrament, self, it was as though he listened to a voice that had long been trying to catch his attention, to tell him, Yes, this was the subject long withheld from him, which he now knew, and must eventually act on.

He had managed, though, to avoid it. He only brought it out now to please his editor, at the same time aware that it wasn't what she had in mind at all. But he couldn't do better; he had really only the one subject, if subject was the word for it, this idea of a notion or a holy thing growing clear in the stream of time, being made manifest in unexpected ways to an assortment of people: the revelation itself wasn't important, it could be anything, almost. Beyond that he had only one interest, the seasons, which he could describe endlessly and with all the passion of a country-bred boy grown old in the city. He was beginning to doubt (he said) whether these were sufficient to make an ~ John Crowley

All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here. ~ Jodi Picoult

I don't miss the Moon, because I have you. ~ Avijeet Das

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 hunger and heat combined, a poisonous taste resembling defeat; yes, he thought, that's what it is: I've been defeated in some obscure way. By having killed the androids? By Rachael's murder of my goat? He did not know, but as he plodded along, a vague and almost hallucinatory pall hazed over his mind; he found himself at one point, with no notion of how it could be, a step from an almost certainly fatal cliffside fall - falling humiliatingly and helplessly, he thought; on and on, with no one even to witness it. Here there existed no one to record his or anyone else's degradation, and any courage or pride which might manifest itself here at the end would go unmarked: the dead stones, the dust-stricken weeds dry and dying, perceived nothing, recollected nothing, about him or themselves.

At that moment the first rock - and it was not rubber or soft foam plastic - struck him in the inguinal region. And the pain, the first knowledge of absolute isolation and suffering, touched him throughout in its undisguised actual form.

He halted. And then, goaded on - the goad invisible but real, not to be challenged - he resumed his climb. Rolling upward, he thought, like the stones; I am doing what stones do, without volition. Without it meaning anything. ~ Philip K. Dick

When I then turned toward the scriptures, they appeared to me to be quite unworthy to be compared with the dignity of Tully. For my inflated pride was repelled by their style, nor could the sharpness of my wit penetrate their inner meaning. Truly they were of a sort to aid the growth of little ones, but I scorned to be a little one and, swollen with pride, I looked upon myself as fully grown. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

In the OED editors' defense, they have set out to accomplish something that is inherently impossible - to record the entirety of a language. It is only natural they should occasionally come across words that are virtually indefinable, or that have meanings that have been lost to the ages. Whatever failings or inconsistencies the editors may exhibit are certainly not for lack of effort. James Murray in particular was renowned for attempting to ferret out knowledge, writing letters to every authority he could think of and posting queries in newspapers begging for information on a word. When I read the definition of lege de moy ("App. the name of some dance") I cannot help but imagine that they must have spent a tremendous amount of time looking for the meaning and roots of this word before one of the editors finally threw his hands up in disgust and exclaimed, "What the hell - just say it's some kind of dance or something, and let's get to the pub." As ~ Ammon Shea

The moral issues with which Marcus struggles would be, as he points out, unchanged whether the universe were mechanical and devoid of meaning or value or ruled by deity or Providence; whether the will were in fact free or determined; whether there were or were not a future life, or any even fugitive rewards and punishments at all. ~ Kenneth Rexroth

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

Unfortunately, the vocabulary, which was previously so rich in describing the nuances of nature, has severely diminished over the past decades. As the words disappear, so does the knowledge of complex ecological connections. Our view of the various landscapes is reduced, we attach less meaning to them, and they become less valuable to us. And that also makes them easier to destroy, in our pursuit of short-term gains. ~ Morten A. Strøksnes

Right and wrong were shades of meaning, not sides of a coin. ~ Louise Erdrich

As it is not a settled question, you must clear your mind of the fancy with
which we all begin as children, that the institutions under which we live,
including our legal ways of distributing income and allowing people to own things, are natural, like the weather. They are not. Because they exist everywhere in our little world, we take it for granted that they have always existed and must always exist, and that they are self-acting. That is a dangerous mistake. They are in fact transient makeshifts; and many of them would not be obeyed, even by well-meaning people, if there were not a policeman within call and a prison within reach. They are being changed continually by Parliament, because we are never satisfied with them.... At the elections some candidates get votes by promising to make new laws or to get rid of old ones, and others by promising to keep things just as they are. This is impossible. Things will not stay as they are.

Changes that nobody ever believed possible take place in a few generations. Children nowadays think that spending nine years in school, oldage and widows' pensions, votes for women, and short-skirted ladies in Parliament or pleading in barristers' wigs in the courts are part of the order of Nature, and always were and ever shall be; but their great-grandmothers would have set down anyone who told them that such things were coming as mad, and anyone who wanted them to come as wicked. ~ George Bernard Shaw

If a person is to get the meaning of life he must learn to like the facts about himself
ugly as they may seem to his sentimental vanity
before he can learn the truth behind the facts. And the truth is never ugly. ~ Eugene O'Neill