A Christmas Vacation Quotes

Sometimes you’re just the sweetest thing. Like Christmas, summer vacation, and a brand-new puppy rolled into one.

Some cities, like wrapped boxes under Christmas trees, conceal unexpected gifts, secret delights. Some cities will always remain wrapped boxes, containers of riddles never to be solved, nor even to be seen by vacationing visitors, or, for that matter, the most inquisitive, persistent travelers.

Sitting in the study hall he opened the lid of his desk and changed the number pasted up inside from seventy-seven to seventy-six. But the Christmas vacation was very far away: but one time it would come because the earth moved round always. -Stephen Dedalus-

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.

Sometimes you’re just the sweetest thing. Like Christmas, summer vacation, and a brand-new puppy all rolled into one.

There is Normal Society and then there is the Abnormal Freaks Who Deserve Our Public Pity and Private Ridicule Society. The first is the world of good jobs and Christmas shopping and marriages and vacations and the scent of new cars. And then there is that other world, the world of the glazed eye, of people who chant at the moon and spout conspiracy theories and get sexually aroused by furry animal costumes. Some dress all in black to carry out vampire rituals and others col ect cats until they’re a furry shoulder-to-shoulder flood on every floor of the house. The Abnormal travel among the Normal and leave behind them a trail of sickeningly awkward conversations and stifled laughter, of hidden smirks and rolled eyes. And worst of all, pity.

Good morning,” he says, with a tilt of his cup in my direction, interrupting my thoughts. He holds up the hose and in his best Cousin Eddie impression from Christmas Vacation, he says, “Shitter was full.

I had spent enough time in France to know that the words 'chez moi' meant something a thousand times more profound than one's current home. 'Chez moi' was the place your parents came from, or maybe even the region of your parents' parents. The food you ate at Christmas, your favorite kind of cheese, your best childhood memories of summer vacation -- all of these derived from 'chez moi.' And even if you had never lived there, 'chez moi' was knitted into your identity; it colored the way you viewed the world and the way the world viewed you.

Christmas and New Year should not be a temporary dose of heroine to sedate people and have them consume more goods, go on vacations, or sit with family and friends at the dinner tables of triviality to boast presumed ‘achievements’ or share pathetic stories about ‘changing the world’.

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.

So,Batman,eh?" Effing St. Clair. I cross my arms and slouch into one of the plastic seats. I am so not in the mood for this.He takes the chair next to me and drapes a relaxed arm over the back of the empty seat on his other side. The man across from us is engrossed in his laptop,and I pretend to be engrossed in his laptop,too. Well,the back of it. St. Clair hums under his breath. When I don't respond,he sings quietly. "Jingle bells,Batman smells,Robin flew away..." "Yes,great,I get it.Ha ha. Stupid me." "What? It's just a Christmas song." He grins and continues a bit louder. "Batmobile lost a wheel,on the M1 motorway,hey!" "Wait." I frown. "What?" "What what?" "You're singing it wrong." "No,I'm not." He pauses. "How do you sing it?" I pat my coat,double-checking for my passport. Phew. Still there. "It's 'Jingle bells, Batman smells,Robin laid an egg'-" St. Clair snorts. "Laid an egg? Robin didn't lay an egg-" "'Batmobile lost a wheel,and the Joker got away.'" He stares at me for a moment,and then says with perfect conviction. "No." "Yes.I mean,seriously,what's up with the motorway thing?" "M1 motorway. Connects London to Leeds." I smirk. "Batman is American. He doesn't take the M1 motorway." "When he's on holiday he does." "Who says Batman has time to vacation?" "Why are we arguing about Batman?" He leans forward. "You're derailing us from the real topic.The fact that you, Anna Oliphant,slept in today." "Thanks." "You." He prods my leg with a finger. "Slept in." I focus on the guy's laptop again. "Yeah.You mentioned that." He flashes a crooked smile and shrugs, that full-bodied movement that turns him from English to French. "Hey, we made it,didn't we? No harm done." I yank out a book from my backpack, Your Movie Sucks, a collection of Roger Ebert's favorite reviews of bad movies. A visual cue for him to leave me alone. St. Clair takes the hint. He slumps and taps his feet on the ugly blue carpeting. I feel guilty for being so harsh. If it weren't for him,I would've missed the flight. St. Clair's fingers absentmindedly drum his stomach. His dark hair is extra messy this morning. I'm sure he didn't get up that much earlier than me,but,as usual, the bed-head is more attractive on him. With a painful twinge,I recall those other mornings together. Thanksgiving.Which we still haven't talked about.

What kind of a barbarian listens to Christmas music in May?

Christmas vacation wasn’t really a vacation, on account of how it was our last chance to study for exams, which started the day after we got back.

In the distance, people were living lives, having fun, learning, making money, fighting and walking around and falling in and out of love. People were being born, growing up, dropping dead. Trevor was probably spending his Christmas vacation with some woman in Hawaii or Bali or Tulum. He was probably fingering her at that very moment, telling her he loved her. He might actually be happy. I shut the window and lowered all the blinds.

Strange where our passions carry us, floggingly pursue us, forcing upon us unwanted dreams, unwelcome destinies. Her alleged abilities to sift the sands of daydreams until she produced the solid stuff, golden realities. Her power resided in her attitude: she behaved as though she believed she was irresistible. She sounds the way bananas taste. Some cities, like wrapped boxes under Christmas trees, conceal unexpected gifts, secret delights. Some cities will always remain wrapped boxes, containers of riddles never to be solved, nor even to be seen by vacationing visitors, or, for that matter, the most inquisitive, persistent travelers. To know such cities, to unwrap them, as it were, one has to have been born there. Venice is like that.

Marie-Laure will not see anything for the rest of her life. Spaces she once knew as familiar–the four-room flat she shares with her father, the little tree-lined square at the end of her street–have become labyrinths bristling with hazards. Drawers are never where they should be. The toilet is an abyss. A glass of water is too near, too far; her fingers too big, always too big.

Matthias and I met up again in the lab after Christmas vacations and sat down to write our paper. One major question was where to send it. Nature, the British journal, and its American counterpart Science, enjoy the most prestige and visibility in the scientific community and in the general media, and either would have been an obvious choice. But they both impose strict length limits on manuscripts, and I wanted to explain all the details of what we had done—not only to convince the world that we had the real thing but also to promote our painstaking methods of extracting and analyzing ancient DNA. In addition, I had become disenchanted with both journals because of their tendency to publish flashy ancient DNA results that did not meet the scientific criteria our group considered necessary. They often seemed more interested in publishing papers that would give them coverage in the New York Times and other major media outlets than in making sure the results were sound and likely to hold up.

gravity didn’t even exist. As if the thought of slipping off that narrow seat and plummeting to the ground never entered any of their minds. Growing up, she’d had a hard enough time riding the chair lift during her family’s annual Christmas vacations to Colorado, but after doing her residency in a hospital emergency room, she had an all-too-vivid image in her head of exactly what the result of such a fall would look like. How had she let Maddy and Amy talk her into this? Of course, sitting in a bookstore coffee shop with her friends last spring, the thought of facing her fear of heights

I got back from the University late in the afternoon, had a quick swim, ate my dinner, and bolted off to the Stanton house to see Adam. I saw him sitting out on the galley reading a book (Gibbon, I remember) in the long twilight. And I saw Anne. I was sitting in the swing with Adam, when she came out the door. I looked at her and knew that it had been a thousand years since I had last seen her back at Christmas when she had been back at the Landing on vacation from Miss Pound's School. She certainly was not now a little girl wearing round-toed, black patent-leather, flat-heeled slippers held on by a one-button strap and white socks held up by a dab of soap. She was wearing a white linen dress, cut very straight, and the straightness of the cut and the stiffness of the linen did nothing in the world but suggest by a kind of teasing paradox the curves and softnesses sheathed by the cloth. She had her hair in a knot on the nape of her neck, and a little white ribbon around her head, and she was smiling at me with a smile which I had known all my life but which was entirely new, and saying, 'Hello, Jack,' while I held her strong narrow hand in mine and knew that summer had come.

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.

Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert talks about this phenomenon in his 2006 book, Stumbling on Happiness. “The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real,” he writes. “The frontal lobe—the last part of the human brain to evolve, the slowest to mature, and the first to deteriorate in old age—is a time machine that allows each of us to vacate the present and experience the future before it happens.” This time travel into the future—otherwise known as anticipation—accounts for a big chunk of the happiness gleaned from any event. As you look forward to something good that is about to happen, you experience some of the same joy you would in the moment. The major difference is that the joy can last much longer. Consider that ritual of opening presents on Christmas morning. The reality of it seldom takes more than an hour, but the anticipation of seeing the presents under the tree can stretch out the joy for weeks. One study by several Dutch researchers, published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life in 2010, found that vacationers were happier than people who didn’t take holiday trips. That finding is hardly surprising. What is surprising is the timing of the happiness boost. It didn’t come after the vacations, with tourists bathing in their post-trip glow. It didn’t even come through that strongly during the trips, as the joy of travel mingled with the stress of travel: jet lag, stomach woes, and train conductors giving garbled instructions over the loudspeaker. The happiness boost came before the trips, stretching out for as much as two months beforehand as the holiday goers imagined their excursions. A vision of little umbrella-sporting drinks can create the happiness rush of a mini vacation even in the midst of a rainy commute. On some level, people instinctively know this. In one study that Gilbert writes about, people were told they’d won a free dinner at a fancy French restaurant. When asked when they’d like to schedule the dinner, most people didn’t want to head over right then. They wanted to wait, on average, over a week—to savor the anticipation of their fine fare and to optimize their pleasure. The experiencing self seldom encounters pure bliss, but the anticipating self never has to go to the bathroom in the middle of a favorite band’s concert and is never cold from too much air conditioning in that theater showing the sequel to a favorite flick. Planning a few anchor events for a weekend guarantees you pleasure because—even if all goes wrong in the moment—you still will have derived some pleasure from the anticipation. I love spontaneity and embrace it when it happens, but I cannot bank my pleasure solely on it. If you wait until Saturday morning to make your plans for the weekend, you will spend a chunk of your Saturday working on such plans, rather than anticipating your fun. Hitting the weekend without a plan means you may not get to do what you want. You’ll use up energy in negotiations with other family members. You’ll start late and the museum will close when you’ve only been there an hour. Your favorite restaurant will be booked up—and even if, miraculously, you score a table, think of how much more you would have enjoyed the last few days knowing that you’d be eating those seared scallops on Saturday night!

No one is completely defined by their knowledge or what they've accomplished. At the end of each of our lives, if you ask the people who knew us what they'll miss the most, it'll be the small ways we loved the people around us. It'll be the memories we made and the big mess-ups we walked through together. It will be our kindness, not our qualifications, that outlast us. It will be the time we unsuccessfully tried to wrap a puppy up for Christmas, not the perfect vacation we planned or the raise we got. It will be the fire we started by mistake in the house while trying to make indoor s'mores during a storm. We won't be missed because of the lectures we gave or arguments we won. We'll be missed because someone will want to call us to share a joy from the day and remember we're no longer there to share the celebration.

Church is important to most folks in the South. So the most important thing going is basically ruled by men as decreed by the Big Man himself. Not only that, but the church puts pressures on women that it does not put on men. Young women are expected to be chaste, moral, and pure, whereas young men are given way more leeway, ’cause, ya know, boys will be boys. Girls are expected to marry young and have kids, be a helpmate to their husbands (who are basically like having another child), and, of course, raise perfect little Christian babies to make this world a better place. So while it’s the preacher man who controls the church, it’s the women—those helpmates—who keep that shit going. They keep the pews tidy and wash the windows; type up the bulletins; volunteer for Sunday school, the nursery, youth group, and Vacation Bible School; fry the chicken for the postchurch dinners; organize the monthly potluck dinners, the spaghetti supper to raise money for a new roof, and the church fund drive; plant flowers in the front of the church, make food for sick parishioners, serve food after funerals, put together the Christmas pageant, get Easter lilies for Easter, wash the choir robes, organize the church trip, bake cookies for the bake sale to fund the church trip, pray unceasingly for their husband and their pastor and their kids and never complain, and then make sure their skirts are ironed for Sunday mornin’ service. All this while in most churches not being allowed to speak with any authority on the direction or doctrine of the church. No, no, ladies, the heavy lifting—thinkin’ up shit to say, standing up at the lectern telling people what to do, counting the money—that ain’t for yuns. So sorry.

Mind if I ask you another question?” I said. “Go ahead,” he replied. I cleared my throat and sat up straight in my seat. “How come…how come it took you so long to call me?” I couldn’t help but grin. It was one of the most direct questions I’d ever asked him. He looked in my direction, then back toward the road. “You don’t have to tell me,” I said. And he didn’t. But I’d wondered more than a handful of times, and as long as he was coming clean about bucket seats and other important matters, I thought it would be a good time to ask him why four months had passed between the first night we’d met in the smoky bar and the night he’d finally called to invite me to dinner. I remembered being knocked over by his magnetism that night during Christmas vacation. What had he thought of me? Had he forgotten me instantly, then remembered me in a flash that April night after my brother’s wedding? Or had he intentionally waited four months to call? Was it some kind of country boy protocol I didn’t know about? I was a girl. I simply had to know.

She opened her eyes just as her pillow heaved out a sigh. “My goodness.” Vim Charpentier slept beside her, his arm around her where she was plastered to his side. Light came through a crack in the window curtains, and a quiet snuffling sounded from the cradle near the hearth. “He’s awake.” Vim’s voice was resigned. “I’ll get him. It’s my turn.” “He’s not fussing yet. You have a few minutes.” Vim sighed gustily, and his hand settled on Sophie’s shoulder. “I do apologize for appropriating half your bed. Just a few more days rest, and I’ll be happy to vacate it.” There was weary humor in his tone and something else… affection? “Vim?” He shifted a little, so Sophie might have met his gaze if she’d had sufficient courage. “I’ve never awoken with a man in my bed before. It’s cozy.” “And I’ve never been referred to as cozy before, but the Infant Terrible has reduced me to viewing that state as worthy in the extreme. You’re cozy too.” He kissed her temple, and a sweetness bloomed in Sophie’s middle. Affection. It was different from passion and different with a man than with, say, a sibling or friend. It was wonderful. “Sophie?

I’ve gotta go,” I say, scowling at my phone. “Now?” Ryder asks, tipping my chin up with one hand so that our eyes meet. “Unfortunately. It’s my mom. Lucy and Morgan are covering for me, but I’ve got to get back. I’m supposed to be at the drugstore.” “What are we going to tell them? Our moms, I mean?” I shake my head. “We can’t tell them anything. At least, not yet. Can you imagine the pressure they’d put on us if they knew? I mean, they already drive us nuts and they think we hate each other.” “You’re right. So…we keep it a secret?” “Not exactly. I’ve got to tell Lucy and Morgan. Just…not our parents, okay? Besides, think how fun it will be, sneaking around.” His eyes light with mischief. “Good point.” “Don’t go getting any naughty ideas,” I tease. “C’mon, walk me to my car.” He takes my hand and falls into step beside me, glancing down at me with a wicked grin. “What?” I ask. “Hey, you’re the one who brought up ‘naughty,’ not me.” I poke him playfully in the ribs. “I’ve got an idea,” he says. “Let’s pretend we’ve got to do a school project together. You know, say that we’ve been paired up against our will. We can make a big fuss about it--complain about having to spend so much time together.” “While we secretly do lots of naughty things?” I offer. He nods. “Exactly.” I shiver, imagining the possibilities. Suddenly, I’m looking forward to those Sunday dinners at Magnolia Landing. And to Christmas and the inevitable Cafferty-Marsden winter vacation. In fact, the rest of the school year looms ahead like a lengthy stretch of opportunities, no longer filled with uncertainty and doubt, but with the knowledge that I’m on the right path now…the perfect path. And like Nan suggested, I’m going to grab it. Embrace it. Hold on to it tightly--just like I’m holding on to this boy beside me. We reach my car way too quickly. I’m not ready to go, to leave him, to begin this necessary charade. I lean against my car’s door with a sigh, drawing Ryder toward me. His entire body is pressed against mine, firing every cell inside me at once. My knees go weak as he kisses me softly, his lips lingering on mine, despite the urgency. “Good night,” I whisper. “Good night,” he whispers back, his breath warm against my cheek. Oh man. It just about kills me to slip inside the car and turn the key in the ignition. I’m grinning to myself as I drive away, watching as Ryder becomes a speck in my rearview mirror before melting into the night.

So…,” I began. Was it just a high school thing? Or worse, I imagined, is it just that I’m not and never will be a country girl? Is it that country girls have some wild sense of abandon that I wasn’t born with? A reckless side, a fun, adventurous side that makes them worthy of riding next to boys in pickups? Am I untouchable? Am I too prim? Too proper? I’m not! I’m really not! I’m fun and adventurous. Reckless, too! I have a pair of jeans: Anne Kleins! And I want to be Middle Seat Worthy. Please, Marlboro Man…please. I’ve never wanted anything this much. “So, um…why don’t you do it anymore?” I asked. “Bucket seats,” Marlboro Man answered, his hand still resting on my leg. Made sense. I settled in and relaxed a bit. But I had another question I’d been mulling over. “Mind if I ask you another question?” I said. “Go ahead,” he replied. I cleared my throat and sat up straight in my seat. “How come…how come it took you so long to call me?” I couldn’t help but grin. It was one of the most direct questions I’d ever asked him. He looked in my direction, then back toward the road. “You don’t have to tell me,” I said. And he didn’t. But I’d wondered more than a handful of times, and as long as he was coming clean about bucket seats and other important matters, I thought it would be a good time to ask him why four months had passed between the first night we’d met in the smoky bar and the night he’d finally called to invite me to dinner. I remembered being knocked over by his magnetism that night during Christmas vacation. What had he thought of me? Had he forgotten me instantly, then remembered me in a flash that April night after my brother’s wedding? Or had he intentionally waited four months to call? Was it some kind of country boy protocol I didn’t know about? I was a girl. I simply had to know. “I was…,” he began. “Well, I was dating someone else.” I’ll kill her with my bare hands. “Oh,” I said in return. It was all I could muster. “Plus, I was running a herd of cows in Nebraska and having to drive up there every week,” he continued. “I just wasn’t here enough to break things off with her in the right way…and I didn’t want to call you and ask you out until that was all resolved.” I repeated myself. “Oh.” What was her name? She’s dead to me. “I liked you, though,” he said, flashing me a smile. “I thought about you.” I couldn’t help but smile back. “You did?” I asked quietly, still wondering what the girl’s name was. I wouldn’t rest till I knew. “I did,” he said sweetly, stroking my leg with his hand. “You were different.” I stopped short of interrogating him further, of asking him to specify what he meant by “different.” And it didn’t take much imagination to figure it out. As he drove me around his familiar homeland, it was obvious what he would have considered “different” about me. I didn’t know anything about the country.

If you could travel anywhere in the US for a vacation, where would you go?" He reached up with his free hand and rubbed his jaw, two creases forming between his eyebrows. She wanted to take over for him, brush her fingers across his whiskers, make him groan the way she had earlier. But she decided to behave herself. For now. "I've always wanted to go to Yellowstone," he said. "See all the wildlife. Maybe go fishing.".... "I'd pick a beach, Florida or California. Where I could be in my bikini more than not, rarely wear shoes, and wake up to the sound of the ocean." "Well, if you're gonna be wearing a bikini, I'm switching to a beach vacation with you.".... "Okay, so foreign vacation," she said, snuggling against him. "Then where would you go?".... "Let's just cut to the chase and say wherever you'd go.

President Obama heads to Hawaii for a Christmas and New Year's vacation with his family. For developments, visit postpolitics.com.

Of course, come to-morrow" I said and gave him my address in Brooklyn. Before he arrived, he sent me a magnificent arrangement of flowers. We had moved to Brooklyn in November and had the essentially necessary furniture, but no flower vase. When the flowers arrived, I used two borscht jars to put them in. Carlos Bendayan arrived and we talked and talked. He was the son of a wealthy Sephardic family from Venezuela. Carlos was a young man, about 21, on his first trip abroad alone. He was telling me that he realized that I must be Jewish and it became clear to me that I knew very little about Sepharadim. His name was Hebrew, it meant: son of the judge. He was going to spend the Christmas vacation with his parents and younger brother in Spain. Actually, he was being groomed to enter his father's business.

Kevin chuckled and walked over to his bike. He put up the kickstand and grabbed the handles. It was time to head home. “Nya.” Blink. “Nya?” “Nya.” Blink. Blink. Kevin looked at the wall near the distribution building—and nearly squealed upon spotting the small, cute, adorably furry animal sitting on its haunches. A black cat with big yellow eyes stared at him. Its tail swayed behind it, moving left, then right. It opened its mouth, releasing another one of those utterly endearing, if unusual, “nya” sounds. This cat reminds me of the one that I took home with me when I was in elementary school. It even nyas. How cool is that? “Kitty!” Like a child who’d just seen a new toy on Christmas Day, Kevin dropped his bike and went over to the cat, whose large incandescent orbs had yet to leave his face. He reached the feline in record time, and his hand was quick to descend upon its head. The cat didn’t seem to mind. Indeed, it reveled in the attention, purring as he gently scratched behind its left ear, which twitched with minute movements.

What if he walked into Miss Applebaum’s class the first day after Christmas vacation and she had all her gifts lined up on her desk—a new coffee mug, a paperweight, a pencil holder, a vase . . . And what if she thanked each person out loud and showed the gift to the class? What if, at the very end, she said, “And then, from Wally Hatford, I received this very strange present . . .” and held up his underpants for all the class to see? Underpants with a happy face drawn on the seat? Wally didn’t think he could stand it. He even tried calling his teacher to explain, but there was no Applebaum listed in the phone book. Maybe she didn’t live in Buckman. Or maybe she was unlisted so that boys who went around giving their teachers underpants couldn’t bother them over school vacations.

Some years later, during a heart-to-heart chat, a friend of mine remarked that I have the propensity to disappear, when faced with hindrances. He advised me to face problems head-on, instead of avoiding confrontations and running away like a coward, much as I had with my dad, with you, and with Tony. This is a liability I’m learning to confront. And, it isn’t easy.               Thanks to my sister, Aria, I was able to make peace with my father, before he passed. For years, I had resented the way he treated us, during our Christmas vacation at Vaduz. I couldn’t bring myself to forgive the insults he flung at us. Although my mother did her best to assuage the damage, I fled as quickly and as far as I could. I had refused to meet with my dad unless he apologized; he refused to budge. During his final days, Aria and Ari begged me to return home, to pay my respects. It was then and there that we made peace. Before he took his final breath, he apologized and asked my forgiveness. When he finally accepted me for who I am, an immense relief flooded me. I came to the realization that our time on earth is short, and if either one of us had been less difficult, our years of estrangement could have been resolved long before.               Relief followed apprehension, for I knew he had died in peace; for this, I am eternally grateful.               What about you? How did you get on with your father? When we parted ways, you had unresolved issues with him, as I did with mine. Now that the ball is in your court, send me your chronicles.☺

It's okay to eat more or more often during holidays, vacations, or special events. Having “splurge days” is part of the plan. Enjoy yourself at Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year's but get back on track the next day. One Meal A Day isn't about restrictions but variety and freedom to eat what you want and still lose weight. Enjoy yourself. That's part of life too.

Point Cook This Christmas

This Christmas, make it next Christmas.

Have a Fiji Christmas in the sun.

For any parent, there is that moment when you see your child again after any length of separation. It’s like Christmas morning and the first day of summer vacation all rolled into one exquisite moment.

Interestingly, the reward system that is activated in the brain when you receive a reward is the same system that is activated when you anticipate a reward. This is one reason the anticipation of an experience can often feel better than the attainment of it. As a child, thinking about Christmas morning can be better than opening the gifts. As an adult, daydreaming about an upcoming vacation can be more enjoyable than actually being on vacation. Scientists refer to this as the difference between “wanting” and “liking.

The Federal Reserve Act was passed by Congress in 1913 while most of its members were on Christmas vacation giving all powers to this newly created central bank to issue legal tender and regulate the money supply as it saw fit.

ELEVATION: A love letter. A ticket stub. A well-worn T-shirt. Haphazardly colored cards from your kids that make you smile with delight. INSIGHT: Quotes or articles that moved you. Books that changed your view of the world. Diaries that captured your thoughts. PRIDE: Ribbons, report cards, notes of recognition, certificates, thank-yous, awards. (It just hurts, irrationally, to throw away a trophy.) CONNECTION: Wedding photos. Vacation photos. Family photos. Christmas photos of hideous sweaters. Lots of photos. Probably the first thing you’d grab if your house caught on fire.

This is one reason the anticipation of an experience can often feel better than the attainment of it. As a child, thinking about Christmas morning can be better than opening the gifts. As an adult, daydreaming about an upcoming vacation can be more enjoyable than actually being on vacation. Scientists refer to this as the difference between “wanting” and “liking.

But politics has no space in Rob’s mind right now or ever. Neither do his migrant roots nor does the Philippines, with which his parents maintain a sentimental bond and to which, while he was growing up, they tried to endear him, speaking to him in a mix of Tagalog and Bicolano, of which he remembers not a word, except Mabuhay and magayon, salamat, too, and taking him as often as they could on vacations to famous Philippine beaches, fiestas, and other sites, including Christmas in Manila.

The consumer society and its harassed citizens had other things to think of. Although it was a month to Christmas, the advertising orgy had begun and the buying hysteria spread as swiftly and ruthlessly as the Black Death along the festooned shopping streets. The epidemic swept all before it and there was no escape. It ate its way into homes and apartments, poisoning and braking down everything and everyone in its path. Children were already howling from exhaustion and fathers of families were plunged into debt until their next vacation. The gigantic legalized confidence trick claimed victims everywhere. The hospitals had a boom in cardiac infractions, nervous breakdowns, and burst stomach ulcers. The police stations downtown had frequent visits from the outriders of the great family festival, in the shape of Santa Clauses who were dragged blind drunk out of doorways and public urinals. . .two exhausted patrolmen dropped a drunken Father Christmas in the gutter when they tried to get him into a taxi.

In the beginning there was a great darkness upon the Earth. There was Christmas and your birthday but beyond that all was a black endless authoritarian void. There was nothing to look forward to, nothing to look back upon, no future, no history. It was all a kid could do to make it to summer vacation. Then, in a moment of light, blinding as a universe birthing a billion new suns, there was hope, sex, rhythm, excitement, possibility, a new way of seeing, of feeling, of thinking, of looking at your body, of combing your hair, of wearing your clothes, of moving and living. There was a joyous demand made, a challenge, a way out of this dead-to-life world, this small-town grave with all the people I dearly loved and feared buried in it alongside of me.

It feels like Christmas morning and summer vacation and every wish you ever made over candles on your birthday cake as a little kid come true. It feels like finding something you didn’t even know you’d lost and then wondering how you ever lived without it. It feels like lightning. Like fire. But also like the world’s most comfortable bed. It feels like everything you could ever want but know you don’t deserve and will never be worthy of. It feels, prick, like magic.

This trip was the only vacation I’d taken in years and a Christmas gift to myself.

I hadn’t taken a vacation since I’d opened Crumbs five years ago.

A decade or two ago, the emptiness which was beginning to be experienced on a fairly broad scale by the middle classes could be laughed at as the sickness of the suburbs. The clearest picture of the empty life is the suburban man, who gets up at the same hour every weekday morning, takes the same train to work in the city, performs the same task in the office, lunches at the same place, leaves the same tip for the waitress each day, comes home on the same train each night, has 2.3 children, cultivates a little garden, spends a two-week vacation at the shore every summer which he does not enjoy, goes to church every Christmas and Easter, and moves through a routine, mechanical existence year after year until he finally retires at sixty-five and very soon thereafter dies of heart failure, possibly brought on by repressed hostility. I have always had the secret suspicion, however, that he dies of boredom.

nights were spent “learning by experience.” Leopard education did not have any vacations or breaks aside from certain religious ones like Eid Al-Fitr, Eid Al-Adha, Christmas, and Easter. For Eid Al-Fitr, while Lamb school was on break, Anatov had all four of them volunteer at a local Muslim orphanage and then work later

Only a few clouds marred an otherwise clear warm day in New York City. School had just let out in the spring of 1951 and the thought of having the summer off was suddenly shattered by knowing that I would have to go to work washing dishes at my uncle’s restaurant. In my family, there was no such thing as a summer vacation. The only allowance I ever received came from having a job. Well, that’s not completely true, as an aunt would sometimes slip me a few bucks when my parents weren’t watching. Even as children when we were in grade school, my brother Bill and I had to work. Aside from shining shoes at local taverns, we did many odd jobs. This would not be the first time I worked for my uncle. During the last Christmas break, I worked as a “pearl diver” at my uncle’s restaurant on 86th Street and 1st Avenue. It was always on a holiday or during the Christmas season that he needed me to cover for the employees who wanted time off. In the days before mechanical dishwashers, pearl divers made certain that there were always more clean dishes than dirty ones. During the rush hours, this could be a challenge, but I had it down to a science. You might say that I was a professional! One day, I arrived at work and discovered that I was the only one there. That promoted me to the exalted position of chief cook and bottle washer, as well as the counter man!

In all these years, you've never had a holiday?" I thought again about the difference in our lives. "We go to visit David's family for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Only for the weekend. In America, there's no week off for Chinese New Year or National Day. I have a week of vacation per year, and sometimes I need to use them for sick days. David and his friend founded a company, so he often works day and night. We never had enough time." Ainara didn't sound cruel, but her words pierced. "There is never enough time–there is only time.

Romance is like the big family vacation every year. The thing you look forward to while you’re doing the hard work. The hard work is what makes that vacation possible. The hard work that you’ve put into the relationship is what allows you to enjoy the reward of the romance. It works that way. But it never works the other way. How long can someone live off of flowers and candy and surprise Christmas morning proposals if your partner uses baby talk in bed or consistently runs up her credit cards over the limit?

Sam was staying at Faith’s tonight. They had decided that she and Lily would leave for Vermont tomorrow as planned and Sam would join them after he fixed the porch’s gazebo. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take him too long. It made Lacey’s stomach sick knowing he was missing out on his much-deserved vacation because of her. If anyone else was available to fix the porch, she’d give them the job and make Sam leave.

As you may recall, when Nick first moved to Eastfield, he was anything but liked. That’s why he invented the story about the scary Indian and the mysterious house. It was a great story—one that made everyone love him. . . for about three days. Then they found out he was lying, and then he was about as popular as a take-home test over Christmas vacation.

In Icy Commentary by Stewart Stafford A wailing winter wind does blow; From séance tap to besieged sloe, All caressed by freezing touch, Shivering sabre shakes as such. Assailant storms of a frigid week, Turned-up collar thaws a cheek, Vacate streets to fireside glow, A jilted bride in confetti snow. Shark gusts with teeth like knives, Draughty house of nagging wives, Spinning tales from an elegiac tome, Cosy dreams in the womb of home. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

Season's Bleatings by Stewart Stafford I'm looking forward to Christmas, As Nostradamus dreaded prophecy, In place of war, famine, apocalypse, I see spending, coveting and family. Wandering through warm déjà vu, In new ways with usual-faced folk, Fat in an absent winter wonderland, Goodwill to all men as you go broke. A fever dream or a deep turkey coma? St. Nicholas dripping presents around? An eviction notice to vacate sobriety, Consumerism and consumption unbound. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

There was a correspondence course he failed to complete; a trip to the castles on the Rhine, Rhone, and Danube that took six years of his savings. Weekend flights to New England in desperate search of spectral Arkham, spring vacations in Haiti, Christmas in rural England, and a cold white dawn at Stonehenge. Midnights walking the streets in storms. And a year ago, the beginning of the collection that walled his study, reading and examining, hunting for a clue to the authors’ ability to write eloquently about the unspeakable, darkly about the commonplace; over and over and over again until he had memorized nearly every florid, majestic, purple, and bitter bitten paragraph. Nightmares. Sweat. The sounds of blood dripping whenever he turned a page.

When things don’t go their way, they have no guilt causing stress. This is true even while on vacation or on days like birthdays, Thanksgiving, or Christmas. No day is sacred to them. Any occasion is open game for them to ruin with an adult temper tantrum.

This isn’t to suggest that the modern Christmas doesn’t have wholesome and nostalgic comforts of its own; it’s just that “Christmastime” was associated with presents, vacation days, and gluttonous feasts of carved meats, stuffed birds, and decorative pastries long before the advent of Christianity, Santa, or even Christ, for purposes that were both practical and primal. Ever since the onset of farming and stock raising, December has been peak comfort food season because it meant winter was coming, which meant livestock had to be slaughtered before snow covered the seasonal grasses that made up their food supply and fresh meat and vegetables had to be either eaten or preserved before the winter frost.

Reaching for his water glass, Jack rubbed his thumb over the film of condensation on the outside. Then he shot me a level glance as if taking up a challenge. “My turn,” he said. I smiled, having fun. “You’re going to guess my perfect day? That’s too easy. All it would involve is earplugs, blackout shades, and twelve hours of sleep.” He ignored that. “It’s a nice fall day—” “There’s no fall in Texas.” I reached for a cube of bread with little shreds of basil embedded in it. “You’re on vacation. There’s fall.” “Am I by myself or with Dane?” I asked, dipping a corner of the bread into a tiny dish of olive oil. “You’re with a guy. But not Dane.” “Dane doesn’t get to be part of my perfect day?” Jack shook his head slowly, watching me. “New guy.” Taking a bite of the dense, delicious bread, I decided to humor him. “Where are New Guy and I vacationing?” “New England. New Hampshire, probably.” Intrigued, I considered the idea. “I’ve never been that far north.” “You’re staying in an old hotel with verandas and chandeliers and gardens.” “That sounds nice,” I admitted. “You and the guy go driving through the mountains to see the color of the leaves, and you find a little town where there’s a crafts festival. You stop and buy a couple of dusty used books, a pile of handmade Christmas ornaments, and a bottle of genuine maple syrup. You go back to the hotel and take a nap with the windows open.” “Does he like naps?” “Not usually. But he makes an exception for you.” “I like this guy. So what happens when we wake up?” “You get dressed for drinks and dinner, and you go down to the restaurant. At the table next to yours, there’s an old couple who looks like they’ve been married at least fifty years. You and the guy take turns guessing the secret of a long marriage. He says it’s lots of great sex. You say it’s being with someone who can make you laugh every day. He says he can do both.” I couldn’t help smiling. “Pretty sure of himself, isn’t he?” “Yeah, but you like that about him. After dinner, the two of you dance to live orchestra music.” “He knows how to dance?” Jack nodded. “His mother made him take lessons when he was in grade school.” I forced myself to take another bite of bread, chewing casually. But inside I felt stricken, filled with unexpected yearning. And I realized the problem: no one I knew would have come up with that day for me. This is a man, I thought, who could break my heart.

at the Throttle ALL WEEK I WONDERED what could possibly have happened to Tom on his first train ride that made it the most exciting experience of his life. When I finally received his second letter I understood why he had said that all the kids in town would turn green with envy. When I showed the kids the letter they didn’t actually turn green any more than a yellow-bellied coward has a yellow belly. But you never saw such a bunch of envious kids in your life. When Tom came home for the Christmas vacation with Sweyn he told Papa, Mamma, Aunt Bertha, our four-year-old foster brother Frankie, and me all about riding in the locomotive from Provo to Salt Lake City.

That message made me more excited and aroused than before my questioning. The clicking soon stopped, and my lover assisted me out of the tub. He dried me off and wrapped us both in large towels. Taking my hand, he guided me to my room. As soon as I heard the door close, my mystery lover released my mask. In bed, snuggled under the duvet, was my sexy roommate John, naked and ready for a night of unbridled sex with Oscar and me. Needless to say, we had a fun filled evening with little sleep and lots of play. By the time Friday rolled round, I had unwittingly plunged myself into a muddy pool of forbidden love. During the course of my Christmas vacation, which followed, it created much uneasiness which I had not anticipated. This is the nature of life. Just when we believe we have it all, life throws us a surprise, so we can learn valuable lessons in another chapter of life, making us stronger and more resilient than before.

Friday afternoon before we broke for Christmas vacation, Andy and I boarded the school’s helicopter. We flew to London to catch the Simorgh to Paris. Ubaid was already on the plane waiting for us. He had helicoptered in from Dublin. Our Arab friend was in good spirits during our 45-minute journey to Charles de Gaulle airport. On the flight I was curious to find out if he had defied his father's wishes and continued to see Gianna. I asked, "You must be happy to be back at university, judging from the look on your face." "Yes, that is true. I am very happy. Gianna flew to Dublin to spend several days with me before she left for New York, with Allegra.

summers from June to September, and over spring and Christmas vacations. At my father’s house, I shared my grandmother’s room. She would read me to sleep each night, not with stories out of books, but with the spoken stories of her life. As we lay there in the darkened room, I struggled to stay awake to hear the amazing things she had to tell. At the same time, her soft voice was a lullaby inviting me to sleep. I wonder now if she found it her personal therapy to murmur her burdens in the darkness to a very interested listener. As I grew older, and she felt I could understand them, she revealed more of the intimate details,

By Christmas vacation, we belonged to one another and I was beginning to look forward to each day. Sarah had begun to talk regularly again; Max was learning his letters; Tyler was smiling occasionally; Peter didn’t fly into rages quite so often; William could pass all the light switches in the hallway to the lunchroom and not say one charm to protect himself; Guillermo was begrudgingly learning Braille. And Susannah Joy and Freddie? Well, we were still trying with them.