Christmas Eve Quotes

Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart...filled it, too, with melody that would last forever.

Faster!" Shane yelled. Eve hit the gas hard, and whipped around a slower-moving van. The firing ceased, at least for now. "You see why I didn't want you to stop?" "Okay, your father is officially off my Christmas list!" Eve yelled. "Oh my God, look at my car!

I don't let anyone touch me," I finally said. Why not?" Why not? Because I was tired of men. Hanging in doorways, standing too close, their smell of beer or fifteen-year-old whiskey. Men who didn't come to the emergency room with you, men who left on Christmas Eve. Men who slammed the security gates, who made you love them then changed their minds. Forests of boys, their ragged shrubs full of eyes following you, grabbing your breasts, waving their money, eyes already knocking you down, taking what they felt was theirs. (...) It was a play and I knew how it ended, I didn't want to audition for any of the roles. It was no game, no casual thrill. It was three-bullet Russian roulette.

I like pessimists. They’re always the ones who bring life jackets for the boat.

Maybe she feels like a jerk about leaving him at Pitch Manor on Christmas Eve. I know I do. The vibe here is very, Let's kill a virgin and write a great Led Zeppelin album

This peppermint winter is so sugar sweet I don't need to taste to believe What's December without Christmas Eve.

Do what you do. This Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year's Eve, Twelfth Night, Valentine's Day, Mardi Gras, St. Paddy's Day, and every day henceforth. Just do what you do. Live out your life and your traditions on your own terms. If it offends others, so be it. That's their problem.

Someone should tell you you're beautiful every time the sun comes up. Someone should tell you you're beautiful on Wednesdays. And at teatime. Someone should tell you you're beautiful on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve and the evening before Christmas Eve, and on Easter. He should tell you on Guy Fawkes Night and on New Year's, and on the eigth of August, just because.

A good conversation always involves a certain amount of complaining. I like to bond over mutual hatreds and petty grievances.

I never believed in Santa Claus. None of us kids did. Mom and Dad refused to let us. They couldn't afford expensive presents and they didn't want us to think we weren't as good as other kids who, on Christmas morning, found all sorts of fancy toys under the tree that were supposedly left by Santa Claus. Dad had lost his job at the gypsum, and when Christmas came that year, we had no money at all. On Christmas Eve, Dad took each one of us kids out into the desert night one by one. "Pick out your favorite star", Dad said. "I like that one!" I said. Dad grinned, "that's Venus", he said. He explained to me that planets glowed because reflected light was constant and stars twinkled because their light pulsed. "I like it anyway" I said. "What the hell," Dad said. "It's Christmas. You can have a planet if you want." And he gave me Venus. Venus didn't have any moons or satellites or even a magnetic field, but it did have an atmosphere sort of similar to Earth's, except it was super hot-about 500 degrees or more. "So," Dad said, "when the sun starts to burn out and Earth turns cold, everyone might want to move to Venus to get warm. And they'll have to get permission from your descendants first. We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa myth and got nothing for Christmas but a bunch of cheap plastic toys. "Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten," Dad said, "you'll still have your stars.

All four of us gasped at the same time—the tree reached the ceiling and curled down at least a foot! What were we to do now?

Are You Ready for New Urban Fragrances? Yeah, I guess I'm ready, but listen: Perfume is a disguise. Since the middle ages, we have worn masks of fruit and flowers in order to conceal from ourselves the meaty essence of our humanity. We appreciate the sexual attractant of the rose, the ripeness of the orange, more than we honor our own ripe carnality. Now today we want to perfume our cities, as well; to replace their stinging fumes of disturbed fossils' sleep with the scent of gardens and orchards. Yet, humans are not bees any more than they are blossoms. If we must pull an olfactory hood over our urban environment, let it be of a different nature. I want to travel on a train that smells like snowflakes. I want to sip in cafes that smell like comets. Under the pressure of my step, I want the streets to emit the precise odor of a diamond necklace. I want the newspapers I read to smell like the violins left in pawnshops by weeping hobos on Christmas Eve. I want to carry luggage that reeks of the neurons in Einstein's brain. I want a city's gases to smell like the golden belly hairs of the gods. And when I gaze at a televised picture of the moon, I want to detect, from a distance of 239,000 miles, the aroma of fresh mozzarella.

Christmas Eve is my favorite... I think the anticipation is more fun than anything else. I kind of lost that. The idea that something - food, traditions, an arbitrary date on the calendar - can be special because we decide it should be. We make it special. Not just for ourselves, but for others.

One strain could call up the quivering expectancy of Christmas Eve, childhood, joy and sadness, the lonely wonder of a star

I didn't know that, you take your coffee seriously, dont you?' 'Every morning, I run to the coffeemaker like a soldier returning to a lost love after the war.

Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart... filled it, too, with a melody that would last forever. Even though you grew up and found you could never quite bring back the magic feeling of this night, the melody would stay in your heart always - a song for all the years.

See, the thing is I didn't think that that song would get much attention because it's such a personal song to me. I just wrote it about my childhood, and I didn't know how that would read on an album. But it's been everybody's favorite song. I didn't tell my mom. It was a total secret. So I wrote it in secret and then decided to record it secretly, so she had no idea that the song was recorded. My producers sent me the track and I synched it up to all my baby videos and I played it for her one Christmas Eve, and she bawled her eyes out. She didn't even think that it was my song. She didn't think there was any way for me to record a song without her knowing.

It was often in small moments that significant things were revealed.

If I listened to your advice, I'd be making your mistakes instead of my own.

Eve engaged her On Duty sign and stepped out of the car. Immediately her ears were assaulted with a blast of music. Christmas carols pumped, full blast, into the air. She decided that people ran inside, ready to buy anything, just to escape the noise.

Well, I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. Crash Davis Bull Durham

As is your sort of mind, So is your sort of search: You will find what you desire.

...I was tired of men. Hanging in doorways, standing too close, their smell of beer or fifteen-year-old whiskey. Men who didn't come to the emergency room with you, men who left on Christmas Eve. Men who slammed the security gates, who made you love them and then changed their minds.

My love for Christmas Eve goes way back to those big gatherings at my grandparents’ house, the focus on Santa Claus and childhood joy. As the years unfolded, I've moved to and visited different cities during the holidays, so my celebration of Christmas Eve took on multiple denominational tones and the focus became the Christ child.

It always is Christmas Eve, in a ghost story.

I think I fell in love with you that amazing night on the kitchen floor. Or maybe it was the evening you stepped up and set my arm." Testing things, he reached for her hand, and, to his joy, she glared, but she let him take it. "Or maybe the night I knew I loved you was when I kissed you under the mistletoe on Christmas Eve. It's hard to say because I look at you now and it seems to me there's never been a time when I didn't love you.

Jerusalem! My Love,My Town I wept until my tears were dry I prayed until the candles flickered I knelt until the floor creaked I asked about Mohammed and Christ Oh Jerusalem, the fragrance of prophets The shortest path between earth and sky Oh Jerusalem, the citadel of laws A beautiful child with fingers charred and downcast eyes You are the shady oasis passed by the Prophet Your streets are melancholy Your minarets are mourning You, the young maiden dressed in black Who rings the bells at the Nativity Church, On sunday morning? Who brings toys for the children On Christmas eve? Oh Jerusalem, the city of sorrow A big tear wandering in the eye Who will halt the aggression On you, the pearl of religions? Who will wash your bloody walls? Who will safeguard the Bible? Who will rescue the Quran? Who will save Christ, From those who have killed Christ? Who will save man? Oh Jerusalem my town Oh Jerusalem my love Tomorrow the lemon trees will blossom And the olive trees will rejoice Your eyes will dance The migrant pigeons will return To your sacred roofs And your children will play again And fathers and sons will meet On your rosy hills My town The town of peace and olives

From the earliest age, we must learn to say good-bye to friends and family. We see our parents and siblings off at the station; we visit cousins, attend schools, join the regiment; we marry, or travel abroad. It is part of the human experience that we are constantly gripping a good fellow by the shoulders and wishing him well, taking comfort from the notion that we will hear word of him soon enough. But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest possessions adieu. And if it were to? We wouldn’t welcome the education. For eventually, we come to hold our dearest possessions more closely than we hold our friends. We carry them from place to place, often at considerable expense and inconvenience; we dust and polish their surfaces and reprimand children for playing too roughly in their vicinity—all the while, allowing memories to invest them with greater and greater importance. This armoire, we are prone to recall, is the very one in which we hid as a boy; and it was these silver candelabra that lined our table on Christmas Eve; and it was with this handkerchief that she once dried her tears, et cetera, et cetera. Until we imagine that these carefully preserved possessions might give us genuine solace in the face of a lost companion.

All I wanted for Christmas was a New Years Eve party that I would never forget. Too bad I got too drunk to remember it.

Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world." Winston Churchill Christmas Eve Message, 1941 as printed in "In the Dark Streets Shineth.

Most of the time when couples argue, it’s not really about the thing they’re fighting about; there’s a deeper reason why they’re arguing.

You’ll wake up soon. It’s Christmas Eve morning. And I loved you.

He wanted the word "Daddy" added to his list of names. He wanted to teach his son to skate, just as he'd been taught by Ernie. Like every other father in the world, he wanted to stay up late on Christmas Eve and put together tricycles, bicycles, and race-car sets. He wanted to dress up his son as a vampire, or a pirate, and take him trick-or-treating.

The smarter you are, the more reasons you have to be miserable.

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

SEEN IT ALL, HEARD IT ALL, DONE IT ALL. JUST CAN'T REMEMBER IT ALL.

A department store two days before Christmas Eve is like a city in a state of siege....

I’ve lost someone, too. And there were no rules for how to deal with the death of someone you loved. You had to accept that the loss would always stay with you, like a reminder note pinned to the inside of your jacket. But there were still opportunities for happiness. Even joy.

Like every other Christmas Eve, she went to Grandpa John's room, because they were the only ones who knew how long the yearning for another person could last, long after everyone else had forgotten.

Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour of the cloak in which--the tree making a forest of itself for her to trip through, with her basket--Little Red Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas Eve to give me information of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling Wolf who ate her grandmother, without making any impression on his appetite, and then ate her, after making that ferocious joke about his teeth. She was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding-Hood, I should have known perfect bliss. But, it was not to be; and there was nothing for it but to look out the Wolf in the Noah's Ark there, and put him late in the procession on the table, as a monster who was to be degraded.

It was the happiest Christmas Eve he had ever spent. To quote his own words, he had a rotten Christmas.

May you find a new grace to live your dreams in coming year.

The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child.

It was high tide, and the sound of the waves coming in sounded like the breath of an enormous dinosaur. Round the lighthouse, on the opposite side to Snugs’ room, Mr andMrs Merryweather put down the blinds, and blew out the candle. They were very tired, and tomorrow was Christmas Eve on The Isle of Wight.

I don’t like to be in delineated moments. I don’t like it when your reality feels prescriptive. I don’t like Christmas holidays and their pseudo-joy. I don’t like New Year’s Eve. I don’t like anything that feels like an established electromagnetic paradigm is pulling you into it’s cliched forebear’s footsteps.

‎He decided quite suddenly, having kept fairly good record on the calendar, that tomorrow was Christmas Eve, and zombies be damned. The Christmas lights were going up.

If everyone could feel as I felt at that moment, dressed in my preppy sweater and McGregor coat and about to set out on a little journey with my Bambi-eyed girlfriend on Christmas Eve, all conflicts in the world would vanish. Mellow smiles would rule the earth.

Did you fall in love with her?" "I care about her. A lot." "You're not supposed to marry someone if you don't fall in love with her." "Well, love is a choice, too." Holly shook her head. "I think it's something that happens to you." Mark smiled into her small, earnest face. "Maybe it's both," he said, and tucked her in.

You’re taking a stray cat but leaving behind your man?” Colbie’s heart twisted. Her man… “He doesn’t fit into the cat carrier.

So if there was a Santa Claus, what would you ask him for?” he asked. You, she nearly said. She’d want him for Christmas and no take backs.

I stopped keeping an eye out for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve because, when I was five, my mother told me that Santa was a wicked pervert who would cut off my peepee with a pair of scissors...if I didn't stop chattering about him, he would be certain to put me on his list and look me up. Christmas was never the same after that, but at least I still have my peepee.

At the end of the day, you should try to remember that it's not about the number of followers you have or the numbers of likes, comments, and shares your posts are getting. It's the number of people who will be present in the hospital room when you fall terribly sick. It's the number of people who will remember your birthday like they remember their first name. It's the number of people who will invite you to celebrate Christmas or new year's eve. It's the number of people who will actually show up to look at your newborn child or to bless your newly bought house. It's the number of people who will actually cross an ocean to see your face. It's the number of people who will wipe your tears when one of your parents passes away. It's the number of people who will make a slightly larger than a thumb effort to be there for you.

Well, stop it or . . . Crap, is that Drunk Santa currently mooning passing traffic?” “Wow, that’s some ugly ass he’s got there. It is Drunk Santa. Oh, please, do we have to stop? Think of the smell. Fear it.” “We can’t leave that ugly ass hanging out on Ninth Avenue.” Resigned, Eve started to pull over, then spotted two hustling beat cops. Pitying them, she kept going. “It’s a Christmas miracle,” Peabody said, reverently.

It was Christmas night, the eve of the Boxing Day Meet. You must remember that this was in the old Merry England of Gramarye, when the rosy barons ate with their fingers, and had peacocks served before them with all their tail feathers streaming, or boars' heads with the tusks stuck in again—when there was no unemployment because there were too few people to be unemployed—when the forests rang with knights walloping each other on the helm, and the unicorns in the wintry moonlight stamped with their silver feet and snorted their noble breaths of blue upon the frozen air. Such marvels were great and comfortable ones. But in the Old England there was a greater marvel still. The weather behaved itself.

There was something about Christmas Eve, they both felt, that demanded company; one needed somebody to whisper to, during the warm beautiful dream-taut moments between hanging the empty stocking at the end of the bed, and dropping into the cosy oblivion that would flower into the marvel of Christmas morning.

Maybe we should go to the gym later and do some crunches or something," Willa said, sounding less than enthused about this propect. Kylie shook her head. "My brain just auto-corrected the word crunches to cupcakes...

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.

It wasn't just coffee...it was an experience. Smooth, roasted, buttery notes gave away to a velvet finish.

Was parenting ever going to get easier? Did you ever reach a point where you could stop worrying?

She could love him, if she let it happen. Deeply, passionately, ruinously.

The saddest thing is an old bag lady, freezing to death in the snow on Christmas Eve, and the last thing she sees is a family in a nice warm diner getting beheaded by the Taliban.

It was Christmas Eve. Big snowflakes fluttered slowly through the air like white feathers and made all of the Heavenly Valley smooth and white and quiet and beautiful. Tall fir trees stood up to their knees in snow and their outstretched hands were heaped with it. Those that were bare of leaves wore soft white fur on their scrawny, reaching arms and all the stumps and low bushes had been turned into fat white cupcakes.

I took ten days off and by 11 o’clock on the first morning I had drunk fourteen cups of coffee, read all the newspapers and the Guardian and then… and then what? By lunchtime I was so bored that I decided to hang a few pictures. So I found a hammer, and later a man came to replaster the bits of wall I had demolished. Then I tried to fix the electric gates, which work only when there’s an omega in the month. So I went down the drive with a spanner, and later another man came to put them back together again. I was just about to start on the Aga, which had broken down on Christmas Eve, as they do, when my wife took me on one side by my earlobe and explained that builders do not, on the whole, spend their spare time writing, so writers should not build on their days off. It’s expensive and it can be dangerous, she said.

Ma!" she cried. "There is a Santa Claus, isn't there?" "Of course there's a Santa Claus," said Ma. "The older you are, the more you know about Santa Claus," she said. "You are so big now, you know he can't be just one man, don't you? You know he is everywhere on Christmas Eve. He is in the Big Woods, and in Indian Territory, and far away in York State, and here. He comes down all the chimneys at the same time. You know that, don't you?" "Yes, Ma," said Mary and Laura. "Well," said Ma. "Then you see--" "I guess he is like angels," Mary said, slowly. And Laura could see that, just as well as Mary could. Then Ma told them something else about Santa Claus. He was everywhere, and besides that, he was all the time. Whenever anyone was unselfish, that was Santa Claus. Christmas Eve was the time when everybody was unselfish. On that one night, Santa Claus was everywhere, because everybody, all together, stopped being selfish and wanted other people to be happy. And in the morning you saw what that had done. "If everybody wanted everybody else to be happy all the time, then would it be Christmas all the time?" Laura asked, and Ma said, "Yes, Laura.

My theory about meeting people,' he said,'is that it's better not to make a really good first impression. Because it's all downhill from there. You're always having to live up to that first impression, which was just an illusion.

No one has ever told me that I'm beautiful before," Hazel said. She hadn't realized it was true until she said it out loud. Jack stood with his hands on either side of her face and stared at her for a few heartbeats. Then he leaned in and softly kissed both her eyelids. "Someone should tell you that you're beautiful every time the sun comes up. Someone should tell you you're beautiful on Wednesdays. And at teatime. Someone should tell you you're beautiful on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve and the evening before Christmas Eve, and on Easter. He should tell you on Guy Fawkes Night and on New Year's, and on the eighth of August, just because." He kissed her lips once more, gently, and then pulled away and gazed into her eyes. "Hazel Sinnett, you are the most miraculous creature I have ever come across, and I am going to be thinking about how beautiful you are until the day I die.

It is in the old story that all the beasts can talk, in the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the morning (though there are very few folk that can hear them, or know what it is that they say).

And there it is! Bravo! I knew it was only a matter of time before Byron realized he had an audience. That man is simply incapable of keeping his shirt on when there are spectators. One Christmas Eve, he stripped his shirt off right in the middle of the choir's rendition of Oh Child of Bethlehem. Coincidentally, the next song was Come Let Us Adore Him and the imbecile actually launched into some interpretive dance.

...she saw herself. Christmas Eve. The snowman. Sorting the buttons. Disappointed she didn't have a matching pair for the eyes. Deciding it didn't matter-the large navy and chocolate buttons were all she had...

She kissed him, and then kept at it, kissing hello and goodbye and just because, because she knew this was all going to stop soon.

The birth of Jesus Christ is a reminder of what Adam and Eve failed to do in the Garden of Eden.

From my blood and bone and vomit I conjured up a beautiful labyrinth to house you in. I was terrified you’d find some way to escape before I was done. I made you look like a Christmas-tree fairy … I made you look like a Renaissance angel … I made you Adam and Eve … Galatea. Barbie. Frankenstein’s monster with long yellow hair.. As the world went up I remade us both. I hid me in you … I hid you in me. And when we were together … once the shaman had claimed the sun … I became God.

Having said that, I'll give the two of you my full blessing and support--provided you're not yanking her around," she advised, addressing Sean. "I'm not, I swear." "Good. Because if I find out you are? I'll cut off your balls and use them as Christmas ornaments. We're clear?" "Mama!" He nearly choked on a bit of pie. "Crystal." Amelia graced him with the full force of her angelic smile. "Fantastic. More pie?" -Eve's Mama

For months I yearned to see Santa again, mooning for him like a lost love. Then, on Christmas Eve, I was awakened by someone shaking me in my bed. “Ho! Ho! Ho!” a voice said out of the darkness. I felt the giggles rising up in my throat. But that's another story...

We all have horrible track records,” he said. “It’s what leads up to the real thing. It’s what allows you to recognize it when it shows up.

Close out the world,” he said in her ear. “Close out everything but this.

Colbie looked at Spence. “Are you sure you’re not in a relationship with Elle?” “No, I’m in a relationship with bad judgment.

Sir, I’ve known him ever since he was born! We’ve played snowball, and built snow-houses together, which are called igloos, and once, when one of Santa’s reindeer was sick on Christmas Eve, Snow Bear stepped in to help with the presents, and load them on the sleigh - he’s very kind, and clever, and strong, you know.

I want a date with you, Lieutenant, seeing as our Sunday plans were aborted.” “I thought dates went out with the I do’s. Isn’t that in the marriage rule book?” “You didn’t read the fine print. Christmas Eve, barring emergencies. You and me, in the parlor. We’ll open our gifts, drink a great deal of Christmas cheer, and take turns banging each other’s brains out.” “Will there be cookies?” “Without a doubt.” “I’m there.

They all eyeballed the last muffin. “How about we split if four ways?” Kylie suggested. Elle produced a pocketknife. “What the hell is that?” Kylie asked. “I always carry a knife,” Elle said. “You know, in case of having to split a muffin in four pieces. And don’t look shocked. You carry dangerous tools yourelf. Yesterday I watched you use a huge jigsaw like it was nothing.” “Yes, but that was for work,” Kylie said. “Although you’ve got a point about being able to split a muffin. I bet I could do that with a jigsaw in an emergency.

Oooh, and I should check if Fletch is around.” “Fletch?” “Kyle Fletcher, but I call him Fletch,” she says absently. “Ex-boyfriend.” My head swivels toward her. “You’re making plans with your ex-boyfriend?” “Retract those claws, missy. Fletch is still a good friend of mine.” I can’t fight my curiosity. “How long were you together?” “Three years.” I whistle softly. “And then three and a half more with Sean…You’re a nester, huh?” “No, I’m not,” she protests. “Babe, that’s almost seven years of your life spent in a serious relationship. And you’re only twenty-two.” “Twenty-one. I’m a Christmas baby.” “For real? Your birthday’s the twenty-fifth?” “The twenty-fourth. I guess that makes me a Christmas Eve baby. Sorry.” “You better be sorry. How dare you mislead me like that?

Tis a funny thing, reflected the Count as he stood ready to abandon his suite. From the earliest age, we must learn to say good-bye to friends and family. We see our parents and siblings off at the station; we visit cousins, attend schools, join the regiment; we marry, or travel abroad. It is part of the human experience that we are constantly gripping a good fellow by the shoulders and wishing him well, taking comfort from the notion that we will hear word of him soon enough. But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest possessions adieu. And if it were to? We wouldn’t welcome the education. For eventually, we come to hold our dearest possessions more closely than we hold our friends. We carry them from place to place, often at considerable expense and inconvenience; we dust and polish their surfaces and reprimand children for playing too roughly in their vicinity—all the while, allowing memories to invest them with greater and greater importance. This armoire, we are prone to recall, is the very one in which we hid as a boy; and it was these silver candelabra that lined our table on Christmas Eve; and it was with this handkerchief that she once dried her tears, et cetera, et cetera. Until we imagine that these carefully preserved possessions might give us genuine solace in the face of a lost companion. But, of course, a thing is just a thing.

If I were the Devil . . . I mean, if I were the Prince of Darkness, I would of course, want to engulf the whole earth in darkness. I would have a third of its real estate and four-fifths of its population, but I would not be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree, so I should set about however necessary to take over the United States. I would begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve: “Do as you please.” “Do as you please.” To the young, I would whisper, “The Bible is a myth.” I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around. I would confide that what is bad is good, and what is good is “square”. In the ears of the young marrieds, I would whisper that work is debasing, that cocktail parties are good for you. I would caution them not to be extreme in religion, in patriotism, in moral conduct. And the old, I would teach to pray. I would teach them to say after me: “Our Father, which art in Washington” . . . If I were the devil, I’d educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting so that anything else would appear dull an uninteresting. I’d threaten T.V. with dirtier movies and vice versa. And then, if I were the devil, I’d get organized. I’d infiltrate unions and urge more loafing and less work, because idle hands usually work for me. I’d peddle narcotics to whom I could. I’d sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. And I’d tranquilize the rest with pills. If I were the devil, I would encourage schools to refine yound intellects but neglect to discipline emotions . . . let those run wild. I would designate an athiest to front for me before the highest courts in the land and I would get preachers to say “she’s right.” With flattery and promises of power, I could get the courts to rule what I construe as against God and in favor of pornography, and thus, I would evict God from the courthouse, and then from the school house, and then from the houses of Congress and then, in His own churches I would substitute psychology for religion, and I would deify science because that way men would become smart enough to create super weapons but not wise enough to control them. If I were Satan, I’d make the symbol of Easter an egg, and the symbol of Christmas, a bottle. If I were the devil, I would take from those who have and I would give to those who wanted, until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious. And then, my police state would force everybody back to work. Then, I could separate families, putting children in uniform, women in coal mines, and objectors in slave camps. In other words, if I were Satan, I’d just keep on doing what he’s doing. (Speech was broadcast by ABC Radio commentator Paul Harvey on April 3, 1965)

Maybe I didn’t want to let you in,” she said. "Yeah, well, right back at ya, honey.

You’re taking a stray cat but leaving behind your man?” Colbie’s heart twisted. Her man… “He doesn’t fit into the cat carrier.

I resolve to write a new chapter of my life every new day in the New Year.

And although there were countless single dads who were raising daughters, no one could deny that there were milestones that a girl wanted a mother for.

I’ll remember you,” she promised and did as she’d promised herself she would, she walked away.

We use rituals in our Moon Circle in order to set the evening apart as a sacred space. We use it to recentre ourselves, to allow crashing thoughts to melt away. Like music and art, rituals can open our hearts to new possibilities. They allow us to see with a fresh clarity, and bring us to a space of liminality. Liminal space is what we feel when we see a stunning sunset and the world around us drops away. It's when we hear a new song and begin crying at the traffic lights. It's the quiet of Christmas Eve, when everything is done and all the family is asleep, and your mind grows still and full of gladness.

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.

I was holding on to hurricane nights and lit candles and my acoustic guitar resting in your hands. I was holding on to the sound of your voice saying my name and the peace I felt with your arms around me. I was holding on to documentaries in bed and your beautiful eyes closed as you sang Rocket Man and all the songs we never finished. I was holding on to our first text and last phone call and the plane ticket you offered but never sent. I was holding on to our first Christmas together and the last few Christmas Eves apart and I've been thinking we should be together. we should be kissing even if there isn't any mistletoe because if I have you there' no reason to celebrate and fuck, your lips were mine. They were always supposed to be mine. I was holding on to hope and banana pancakes on Sundays. I was holding on to Main Street and sunsets in Jersey. I was holding on to two streets that separated us and blizzards that couldn't keep us apart. I was holding on to you. I was holding on to us. And it was killing me.

The truth was, she’d never really thought about love before—the heart-pounding, can’t-live-without-you kind of love that grows in the pit of the stomach and spreads outward until you’re warm all over. The kind of love you know is real because you’ve got not one single teeny, tiny doubt that he’d be there for you, no matter what

I remembered all the Christmases we’d celebrated, always with a huge tree, situated next to the staircase where I now sat. As a child, I’d sat upon that same step, huddled up against the balus- ters, studying the tree, its shape and decorations; enthralled by the magical light and shadows upon the walls around me. Dancing. Over Christmas the only light in the hallway had come from the silver candelabra burning on the hallway table. But on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day night small candles were attached to the branches of the tree, their soft light reflected in the vast chande- lier suspended high above and thrown back across the walls like stars across the universe. I remembered the smell, that mingling of pine and wax and burning logs: the smell of home, the smell of happiness. I’d sat there in my nightgown, listening to the chime of crystal; the laughter, music and voices emanating from another room, an adult world I could only imagine. And always hoping for a glimpse of Mama, as she whooshed across the marble floor, beautiful, resplendent . . . invincible.

What happens when the YA thriller writer heroine tries to get thru airport security with her research notes in her bag? : “How to murder people by poison without detection,” the TSA agent read aloud. The woman behind Colbie gasped in horror. “Okay,” Colbie said, pointing to them. “That’s not what it looks like.” The woman behind her, cradling a leopard-print cat carrier, had turned and was frantically whispering to the people behind her. “Really,” Colbie said. “It’s a funny story, actually.” But the agent was flipping through her notes, not even remotely interested in her funny story. He didn’t need to read aloud what he was looking at, because she knew exactly what was there – other Google searches, such as how to get away with murder using a variety of different everyday products that weren’t considered weapons. “It’s research,” she said to the room. "Yeah, that’s probably what I’d say too,” a guy said from somewhere behind her.

A SAVIOR IS BORN Psalm 8:9 (ESV) O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!   REFLECTION On this night, shepherds were doing what they always did, keeping an eye on Bethlehem’s sheep through the night. But everything was about to change, as heaven opened and the angel of the Lord appeared to them and declared that Jesus had been born nearby. What irony. The sheep these shepherds were raising would be sacrificed just a few miles down the road on Jerusalem’s altar. Yet the shepherds themselves could not enter the temple to worship even if they wanted to. Because of their profession, they were ceremonially unclean. They were outcasts in the very worship that their hands made possible. Yet, God chose the shepherds to receive the greatest news ever heard. God came to them because He knew the shepherds couldn’t make it to church. What does that say about the Gospel? What does it say about you? This magnificent night says that grace meets you where you are, and saves you while you cannot do a thing to save yourself. Tonight, celebrate that Christ has come. Not to a mansion, but a manger. Not to the high and mighty, but to the guys on the lowest rung of the spiritual ladder. And celebrate that God’s grace finds you wherever you are this Christmas and shows you the way upwards to the arms of Almighty God. MEDITATION FOR CHRISTMAS EVE

Peter, Adam's Son," said Father Christmas. "Here, sir," said Peter. "These are your presents," was the answer, "and they are tools, not toys. The time to use them is perhaps near at hand. Bear them well." With these words he handed to Peter a shield and a sword. The shield was the color of silver and across it there ramped a red lion, as bright as a ripe strawberry at the moment when you pick it. The hilt of the sword was of gold and it had a sheath and a sword belt and everything it needed, and it was just the right size and weight for Peter to use. Peter was silent and solemn as he received these gifts, for he felt they were a very serious kind of present. "Susan, Eve's Daughter," said Father Christmas. "These are for you," and he handed her a bow and a quiver full of arrows and a little ivory horn. "You must use the bow only in great need," he said, "for I do not mean you to fight in the battle. It does not easily miss. And when you put this horn to your lips and blow it, then, wherever you are, I think help of some kind will come to you." Last of all he said, "Lucy, Eve's Daughter," and Lucy came forward. He gave her a little bottle of what looked like glass (but people said afterwards that it was made of diamond) and a small dagger. "In this bottle," he said, "there is a cordial made of the juice of one of the fire-flowers that grow on the mountains of the sun. If you or any of your friends is hurt, a few drops of this will restore them. And the dagger is to defend yourself at great need. For you also are not to be in the battle." "Why, sir?" said Lucy. "I think- I don't know- but I think I could be brave enough." "That is not the point," he said. "But battles are ugly when women fight.

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 any more novels out of, though he knew that writers of genius had made great ones out of less. He supposed really (he didn't say) that he wasn't a novelist at all, but a failed poet, like a failed priest, one who had perceived that in fact he had no vocation, had renounced his vows, and yet had found nothing at all else in the world worth doing when measured by the calling he didn't have, and went on through life fatally attracted to whatever of the sacerdotal he could find or invent in whatever occupation he fell into, plumbing or psychiatry or tending bar. ("Novelty")

Ten's my favorite," he said and read it aloud-- like she didn't know what she'd written. "A wild, passionate, up-against-the-wall, forget-my-name love affair that makes me weak  in the knees when I think about it-- but only a very short wild, passionate, up-against-the-wall, forget-my-name love affair because..." he paused, probably to control himself, before continuing... "I don't have the time or stamina to maintain that level of sexual activity, much less a relationship." She moaned and closed her eyes. "Pretty detailed," he said running a hand over his deliciously scruffy jaw to hide the smile she knew he was fighting.

Deacon met my glare with an impish grin. “Anyway, did you celebrate Valentine’s Day when you were slumming with the mortals?” I blinked. “Not really. Why?” Aiden snorted and then disappeared into one of the rooms. “Follow me,” Deacon said. “You’re going to love this. I just know it.” I followed him down the dimly-lit corridor that was sparsely decorated. We passed several closed doors and a spiral staircase. Deacon went through an archway and stopped, reaching along the wall. Light flooded the room. It was a typical sunroom, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, wicker furniture, and colorful plants. Deacon stopped by a small potted plant sitting on a ceramic coffee table. It looked like a miniature pine tree that was missing several limbs. Half the needles were scattered in and around the pot. One red Christmas bulb hung from the very top branch, causing the tree to tilt to the right. “What do you think?” Deacon asked. “Um… well, that’s a really different Christmas tree, but I’m not sure what that has to do with Valentine’s Day.” “It’s sad,” Aiden said, strolling into the room. “It’s actually embarrassing to look at. What kind of tree is it, Deacon?” He beamed. “It’s called a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree.” Aiden rolled his eyes. “Deacon digs this thing out every year. The pine isn’t even real. And he leaves it up from Thanksgiving to Valentine’s Day. Which thank the gods is the day after tomorrow. That means he’ll be taking it down.” I ran my fingers over the plastic needles. “I’ve seen the cartoon.” Deacon sprayed something from an aerosol can. “It’s my MHT tree.” “MHT tree?” I questioned. “Mortal Holiday Tree,” Deacon explained, and smiled. “It covers the three major holidays. During Thanksgiving it gets a brown bulb, a green one for Christmas, and a red one for Valentine’s Day.” “What about New Year’s Eve?” He lowered his chin. “Now, is that really a holiday?” “The mortals think so.” I folded my arms. “But they’re wrong. The New Year is during the summer solstice,” Deacon said. “Their math is completely off, like most of their customs. For example, did you know that Valentine’s Day wasn’t actually about love until Geoffrey Chaucer did his whole courtly love thing in the High Middle Ages?” “You guys are so weird.” I grinned at the brothers. “That we are,” Aiden replied. “Come on, I’ll show you your room.” “Hey Alex,” Deacon called. “We’re making cookies tomorrow, since it’s Valentine’s Eve.” Making cookies on Valentine’s Eve? I didn’t even know if there was such a thing as Valentine’s Eve. I laughed as I followed Aiden out of the room. “You two really are opposites.” “I’m cooler!” Deacon yelled from his Mortal Holiday Tree room

Wild animals enjoying one another and taking pleasure in their world is so immediate and so real, yet this reality is utterly absent from textbooks and academic papers about animals and ecology. There is a truth revealed here, absurd in its simplicity. This insight is not that science is wrong or bad. On the contrary: science, done well, deepens our intimacy with the world. But there is a danger in an exclusively scientific way of thinking. The forest is turned into a diagram; animals become mere mechanisms; nature's workings become clever graphs. Today's conviviality of squirrels seems a refutation of such narrowness. Nature is not a machine. These animals feel. They are alive; they are our cousins, with the shared experience kinship implies. And they appear to enjoy the sun, a phenomenon that occurs nowhere in the curriculum of modern biology. Sadly, modern science is too often unable or unwilling to visualize or feel what others experience. Certainly science's "objective" gambit can be helpful in understanding parts of nature and in freeing us from some cultural preconceptions. Our modern scientific taste for dispassion when analyzing animal behaviour formed in reaction to the Victorian naturalists and their predecessors who saw all nature as an allegory confirming their cultural values. But a gambit is just an opening move, not a coherent vision of the whole game. Science's objectivity sheds some assumptions but takes on others that, dressed up in academic rigor, can produce hubris and callousness about the world. The danger comes when we confuse the limited scope of our scientific methods with the true scope of the world. It may be useful or expedient to describe nature as a flow diagram or an animal as a machine, but such utility should not be confused with a confirmation that our limited assumptions reflect the shape of the world. Not coincidentally, the hubris of narrowly applied science serves the needs of the industrial economy. Machines are bought, sold, and discarded; joyful cousins are not. Two days ago, on Christmas Eve, the U.S. Forest Service opened to commercial logging three hundred thousand acres of old growth in the Tongass National Forest, more than a billion square-meter mandalas. Arrows moved on a flowchart, graphs of quantified timber shifted. Modern forest science integrated seamlessly with global commodity markets—language and values needed no translation. Scientific models and metaphors of machines are helpful but limited. They cannot tell us all that we need to know. What lies beyond the theories we impose on nature? This year I have tried to put down scientific tools and to listen: to come to nature without a hypothesis, without a scheme for data extraction, without a lesson plan to convey answers to students, without machines or probes. I have glimpsed how rich science is but simultaneously how limited in scope and in spirit. It is unfortunate that the practice of listening generally has no place in the formal training of scientists. In this absence science needlessly fails. We are poorer for this, and possibly more hurtful. What Christmas Eve gifts might a listening culture give its forests? What was the insight that brushed past me as the squirrels basked? It was not to turn away from science. My experience of animals is richer for knowing their stories, and science is a powerful way to deepen this understanding. Rather, I realized that all stories are partly wrapped in fiction—the fiction of simplifying assumptions, of cultural myopia and of storytellers' pride. I learned to revel in the stories but not to mistake them for the bright, ineffable nature of the world.