Icon Christmas Quotes

The starkness of winter can reveal colours we would otherwise miss. I once watched a fox cross a frosty field, her coat shining against the gloom. Walking in the bare winter woodland, I am surrounded by astonishing foxy reds: the deep burnish of bracken, it’s dry fronds twisted to lacework; the deep crimson leaves left on brambles; the last remaining berries on honeysuckle and orange clusters of rose hips. The iconic holly, it’s boughs so thoroughly raided each Christmas. There is the bright yellow of gorse on heathland, going on until spring comes, as well as stately evergreens and the tangle of green leaves that remain unnoticed on the ground. Life goes on abundantly in winter – changes made here will usher us into future glories.

Mostly I love Halloween because it is the orange-and-black beginning of a season that tumbles into Thanksgiving, which tumbles into Christmas. And Zombies just seem a little out of place in that. Thanksgiving should have nothing to do with armies of shuffling undead. Don’t get me started on Christmas. The only undead at Christmas should be Jacob Marley, wailing about greed. The iconic image of Halloween should be the pun’kin. The pun’kin, carved into faces that are scary only because we want them to be, winking from every porch. The pun’kin cast in plastic, swinging from the hands of knee-high princesses, leering back from department store shelves, until it gives way to tins of butter cookies. But I fear for the pun’kin. How long before before he is kicked down the street by zombie hordes, booted into obscurity? Young people tell me that no one—no one— wants to dress up like a pun’kin any more. All a pun’kin does they say is sit there, and glow. This may be true, all of it, but try to make a pie out of a zombie, and see where that gets you. Though I hear that, when it comes to pies, your canned zombie is the way to go.

Barnaby Fanning was the lone offspring of a marriage between two of New Orleans’ finest families. Growing up in a Garden District mansion so iconic it was a stop on all the tours, the future heir to sugar and cotton fortunes both, his adolescence spent at debutante balls during the season and trips abroad during the summer: it was the stuff of true Southern gentlemen. But Bucky always refused the first table at a restaurant. He carried a pocket calculator so he could tip a strict twelve percent. When his father nudged him out of the nest after graduating Vanderbilt (straight Cs), Bucky fluttered only as far as the carriage house because no other address would suit. He sported head-to-toe Prada bought on quarterly pilgrimages to Neiman Marcus in Dallas, paid for by Granny Charbonneau. At the slightest perceived insult, Bucky would fly into rages, becoming so red-faced and spitty in the process that even those on the receiving end of his invective grew concerned for his health. During the holidays, Bucky would stand over the trash and drop in Christmas cards unopened while keeping mental score of who’d sent them. He never accepted a dinner invitation without first asking who else would be there. Bucky Fanning had never been known to write a thank-you note.

Everything was pink because Dorothy wanted it pink and she simply hadn’t allowed anyone to tell her otherwise. Dorothy was an icon. We could all learn something from Dorothy,

Keep in mind that sugar is powerfully addictive.7 I put sugar in the same category as addictive drugs like crack or heroin. Take Oreos, for example. One study from Connecticut showed that rats fed the iconic cookie liked it as much as cocaine and morphine.8 When the rats ate Oreo cookies, the pleasure center of their brains, the nucleus accumbens, lit up like a Christmas tree—the same area in the brain that lights up with cocaine. Sugar and cocaine both stimulate the addictive part of the brain with a neurotransmitter called dopamine, known for its role in pleasure and satisfaction. Rats in the study even broke open the cookie to eat the sugary middle first. Still not sure if you’re addicted to sugar?

Something about the church being like Star Wars? I was trying to remember it today when I was talking to Father McKenzie, but I clean forgot.’ Buchan downed his drink, then placed the glass firmly on the table. There was nothing for him here, nothing good to come from sitting any longer. ‘They both look great,’ said Buchan. ‘The CGI on Star Wars, the colour palettes, the scope and the scale of the worlds they create, is extraordinary. Just like the Church looks great. So many wonderful buildings, so much jaw-dropping architecture and art. And the music too. Star Wars music, it’s epic. Some of the best, most iconic film music there is. And there’s tonnes, I mean, tonnes of great religious music, from, I don’t know, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen to Arvo Pärt’s Deer’s Cry, and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. Everything in between. But then we get to the message, the dialogue, the script, the story... And they’re both shit.