Sentiment Christmas Quotes

Anyone can be sentimental about the nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the resurrection, you’re not a believer." “If you don’t believe in Easter,” Owen Meany said. “Don’t kid yourself—Don’t call yourself a Christian.

I had never before been a special fan of that great comedian Phyllis Diller, but she utterly won my heart this week by sending me an envelope that, when opened, contained a torn-off square of brown-bag paper of the kind suitable for latrine duty in an ill-run correctional facility. Duly unfurled, it carried a handwritten salutation reading as follows: Money's scarce Times are hard Here's your f****** Xmas card I could not possibly improve on the sentiment, but I don't think it ought to depend on the current austerities. Isn't Christmas a moral and aesthetic nightmare whether or not the days are prosperous?

Light the Christmas candles for your children! Let them sing carols! But don't delude yourselves, don't content yourselves year after year with the shabby, pathetic, sentimental feeling you have when you celebrate your holidays! Demand more of yourselves! Love and joy and the mysterious thing we call "happiness" are not over here or over there, they are only "within yourselves.

God, I scream for time to let go, to write, to think. But no. I have to exercise my memory in little feats just so I can stay in this damn wonderful place which I love and hate with all my heart. And so the snow slows and swirls, and melts along the edges. The first snow isn't good for much. It makes a few people write poetry, a few wonder if the Christmas shopping is done, a few make reservations at the skiing lodge. It's a sentimental prelude to the real thing. It's picturesque & quaint.

... it is quite funny really when you think that probably I would have married him if he'd been at all clever about it. But instead of putting it to me as a sensible business proposition he would drag in all this talk about love the whole time, and I simply can't bear those showerings of sentimentality. Otherwise I should most likely have married him ages ago.

This western-front business couldn’t be done again, not for a long time. The young men think they could do it but they couldn’t. They could fight the first Marne again but not this. This took religion and years of plenty and tremendous sureties and the exact relation that existed between the classes. The Russians and Italians weren’t any good on this front. You had to have a whole-souled sentimental equipment going back further than you could remember. You had to remember Christmas, and postcards of the Crown Prince and his fiancée, and little cafés in Valence and beer gardens in Unter den Linden and weddings at the mairie, and going to the Derby, and your grandfather’s whiskers.

See that little stream — we could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a month to walk to it — a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very slowly backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody rugs. No Europeans will ever do that again in this generation.” “Why, they’ve only just quit over in Turkey,” said Abe. “And in Morocco —” “That’s different. This western-front business couldn’t be done again, not for a long time. The young men think they could do it but they couldn’t. They could fight the first Marne again but not this. This took religion and years of plenty and tremendous sureties and the exact relation that existed between the classes. The Russians and Italians weren’t any good on this front. You had to have a whole-souled sentimental equipment going back further than you could remember. You had to remember Christmas, and postcards of the Crown Prince and his fiancée, and little cafés in Valence and beer gardens in Unter den Linden and weddings at the mairie, and going to the Derby, and your grandfather’s whiskers.” “General Grant invented this kind of battle at Petersburg in sixty- five.” “No, he didn’t — he just invented mass butchery. This kind of battle was invented by Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne and whoever wrote Undine, and country deacons bowling and marraines in Marseilles and girls seduced in the back lanes of Wurtemburg and Westphalia. Why, this was a love battle — there was a century of middle-class love spent here. This was the last love battle.

By then Einstein had finally discovered what was fundamental about America: it can be swept by waves of what may seem, to outsiders, to be dangerous political passions but are, instead, passing sentiments that are absorbed by its democracy and righted by its constitutional gyroscope. McCarthyism had died down, and Eisenhower had proved a calming influence. “God’s own country becomes stranger and stranger,” Einstein wrote Hans Albert that Christmas, “but somehow they manage to return to normality. Everything—even lunacy—is mass produced here. But everything goes out of fashion very quickly.”9 Almost

Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the resurrection, you’re not a believer.

Christmas Eve, 1955, Benny Profane, wearing black levis, suede jacket, sneakers and big cowboy hat, happened to pass through Norfolk, Virginia. Given to sentimental impulses, he thought he'd look in on the Sailor's Grave, his old tin can's tavern on East Main Street.

The more a man learns, Dickens said, “the better, gentler, kinder man he must become. When he knows how much great minds have suffered for the truth in every age and time… he will become more tolerant of other men’s belief in all matters, and will incline more leniently to their sentiments when they chance to differ from his own.

More often than not, the moves he made during an investigation were based on feelings. Wretched things, feelings—though they were certainly preferable to sentiments.

To belong to a clan, to a tight group of people allied by blood and loyalties and the mutual ownership of closeted skeletons. To see the family vices and virtues in a dozen avatars instead of in two or three. To know always, whether you were in Little Rock or Menton, that there was one place to which you belonged and to which you would return. To have that rush of sentimental loyalty at the sound of a name, to love and know a single place, from the newest baby-squall on the street to the blunt cuneiform of the burial ground . . . Those were the things that not only his family, but thousands of Americans had missed. The whole nation had been footloose too long, Heaven had been just over the next range for too many generations. Why remain in one dull plot of earth when Heaven was reachable, was touchable, was just over there? The whole race was like the fir tree in the fairy-tale which wanted to be cut sown and dressed up with lights and bangles and colored paper, and see the world and be a Christmas tree. Well, he said, thinking of the closed banks, the crashed market that had ruined thousands and cut his father’s savings in half, the breadlines in the cities, the political jawing and the passing of the buck. Well, we’ve been a Christmas tree, and now we’re in the back yard and how do we like it?

Mindlessly do the bells of secular celebrations jingle for Christmas. Meaninglessly do carols repeat their tinny joys in all the malls in America. No richer than soda pop is every sentimentalized Christmas special on TV. Fearless is the world at play with godly things, because Godless is its heart.

An awful lot of hokum is talked about love, you know. An importance is ascribed to it that is entirely at variance with fact. People talk as though it were self-evidently the greatest of human values. Nothing is less self-evident. Until Plato dressed his sentimental sensuality in a captivating literary form the ancient world laid no more stress on it than was sensible; the healthy realism of the Muslims has never looked upon it as anything but a physical need; it was Christianity, buttressing its emotional claims with neo-Platonism, that made it into the end an aim, the reason, the justification of life. But Christianity was the religion of slaves. It offered the weary and the heavy-laden heaven to compensate them in the future for their misery in this world and the opiate of love to enable them to bear it in the present. And like every drug it enervated and destroyed those who became subject to it. For two thousand years it's suffocated us. It's weakened our wills and lessened our courage. In this modern world we live in we know that almost everything is more important to us than love, we know that only the soft and the stupid allow it to affect their actions, and yet we pay it a foolish lip-service. In books, on the stage, in the pulpit, on the platform the same old sentimental rubbish is talked that was used to hoodwink the slaves of Alexandria.

There was nothing I could possibly say to that, so I turned away, looking out at the traffic, seeing in front of us now a yellow taxicab with a bumper sticker reading Put Christ Back In Christmas. An excellent sentiment, only slightly marred by the fact the lettering was colored red and white and blue, as though Christ were a good American running for reelection. But it’s the thought

It was Tilly’s turn to speak, and she startled them with her words, “I’m very glad tomorrow is Christmas, even though I shan’t have any presents at all.” These sentiments were spoken as the three little girls trudged home from school, and Tilly’s words struck a cord of pity in the others. Kate and Bessy wondered how she could speak so cheerfully and be so happy when she was too poor to receive even the smallest of gifts on Christmas Day.

I look at my snow boots, counting the grommets while I try to name what I'm feeling. This has been a problem lately. It's never been a problem before—I've been happy, and sad, and frustrated. I've felt angry and sentimental. I've loved. I've been loved back. Maintaining long moments of wordless eye contact with the man who is supposed to make me feel okay about going blind, noticing all the exact shades of blue and how I can always tell he's going to smile before he does, pretending I'm not responding to some tension between us? I'm a little exhausted.

It was a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge’s nephew had to think of something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed, elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the streets, and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t led by anybody, and didn’t live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out: “I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!” “What is it?” cried Fred. “It’s your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!” Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment, though some objected that the reply to “Is it a bear?” ought to have been “Yes;” inasmuch as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency that way.

Soon after World War II, a tired-looking woman entered a store and asked the owner for enough food to make a Christmas dinner for her children. When he inquired how much she could afford, she answered, “My husband was killed in the war. Truthfully, I have nothing to offer but a little prayer.” The man was not very sentimental, for a grocery store cannot be run like a breadline. So he said, “Write your prayer on a paper.” To his surprise she plucked a little folded note out of her pocket and handed it to him, saying, “I already did that.” As the grocer took the paper, an idea struck him. Without even reading the prayer, he put it on the weight side of his old-fashioned scales, saying, “We shall see how much food this is worth.” To his surprise, the scale would not go down when he put a loaf of bread on the other side. To his even greater astonishment, it would not balance when he added many more items. Finally he blurted out, “Well, that’s all the scales will hold anyway. Here’s a bag. You’ll have to put them in yourself. I’m busy.” With a tearful “thank you,” the lady went happily on her way. The grocer later found that the mechanism of the scales was out of order, but as the years passed, he often wondered if that really was the answer to what had occurred. Why did the woman have the prayer already written to satisfy his unpremeditated demands? Why did she come at exactly the time the mechanism was broken? Frequently he looked at that slip of paper upon which the woman’s prayer was written, for amazingly enough, it read, “Please, dear Lord, give us this day our daily bread!” —Henry Bosch

It will be long before everyone is wiped out. People live in war time, they always have. There was terror down through history - and the men who saw the Spanish Armada sail over the rim of the world, who saw the Black death wipe out half of Europe, those men were frightened, terrified. But though they lived and died in fear, I am here; we have built again. And so I will belong to a dark age, and historians will say "We have few documents to show how the common people lived at this time. Records lead us to believe that a majority were killed. But there were glorious men." And school children will sigh and learn the names of Truman and Senator McCarthy. Oh, it is hard for me to reconcile myself to this. But maybe this is why I am a girl - - - so I can live more safely than the boys I have known and envied, so I can bear children, and instill in them the biting eating desire to learn and love life which I will never quite fulfill, because there isn't time, because there isn't time at all, but instead the quick desperate fear, the ticking clock, and the snow which comes too suddenly upon the summer. Sure, I'm dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, into my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself. Perhaps that would help, to synthesize my ideas into a philosophy for me, now, at the age of eighteen, but the clock ticks, ah yes, "At my back I hear, time's winged chariot hovering near." And I have too much conscience, too much habit to sit and stare at snow, thick now, and evenly white and muffling on the ground. God, I scream for time to let go, to write, to think. But no. I have to exercise my memory in little feats just so I can stay in this damn wonderful place which I love and hate with all my heart. And so the snow slows and swirls, and melts along the edges. The first snow isn't good for much. It makes a few people write poetry, a few wonder if the Christmas shopping is done, a few make reservations at the skiing lodge. It's a sentimental prelude to the real thing. It's picturesque & quaint.

I am very often asked why, at the age of eighty-five, I continue to practice. Tip number eighty-five (sheer coincidence that I am now eighty-five years old) begins with a simple declaration: my work with patients enriches my life in that it provides meaning in life. Rarely do I hear therapists complain of a lack of meaning. We live lives of service in which we fix our gaze on the needs of others. We take pleasure not only in helping our patients change, but also in hoping their changes will ripple beyond them toward others. We are also privileged by our role as cradlers of secrets. Every day patients grace us with their secrets, often never before shared. The secrets provide a backstage view of the human condition without social frills, role-playing, bravado, or stage posturing. Being entrusted with such secrets is a privilege given to very few. Sometimes the secrets scorch me and I go home and hold my wife and count my blessings. Moreover, our work provides the opportunity to transcend ourselves and to envision the true and tragic knowledge of the human condition. But we are offered even more. We become explorers immersed in the grandest of pursuits—the development and maintenance of the human mind. Hand in hand with patients, we savor the pleasure of discovery—the “aha” experience when disparate ideational fragments suddenly slide smoothly together into a coherent whole. Sometimes I feel like a guide escorting others through the rooms of their own house. What a treat it is to watch them open doors to rooms never before entered, discover unopened wings of their house containing beautiful and creative pieces of identity. Recently I attended a Christmas service at the Stanford Chapel to hear a sermon by Rev. Jane Shaw that underscored the vital importance of love and compassion. I was moved by her call to put such sentiments into practice whenever we can. Acts of caring and generosity can enrich any environment in which we find ourselves. Her words motivated me to reconsider the role of love in my own profession. I became aware that I have never, not once, used the word love or compassion in my discussions of the practice of psychotherapy. It is a huge omission, which I wish now to correct, for I know that I regularly experience love and compassion in my work as a therapist and do all I can to help patients liberate their love and generosity toward others. If I do not experience these feelings for a particular patient, then it is unlikely I will be of much help. Hence I try to remain alert to my loving feelings or absence of such feelings for my patients.

In Mrs. Dimble’s hands the task of airing the little house and making the bed for Ivy Maggs and her jailbird husband became something between a game and a ritual. It woke in Jane vague memories of helping at Christmas or Easter decorations in church when she had been a small child. But it also suggested to her literary memory all sorts of things out of sixteenth-century epithalamiums: age-old superstitions, jokes, and sentimentalities about bridal beds and marriage bowers, with omens at the threshold and fairies upon the hearth. It was an atmosphere extraordinarily alien to that in which she had grown up. A few weeks ago she would have disliked it. Was there not something absurd about that stiff, twinkling archaic world—the mixture of prudery and sensuality, the stylised ardours of the groom and the conventional bashfulness of the bride, the religious sanction, the permitted salacities of Fescennine song, and the suggestion that everyone except the principals might be expected to be rather tipsy? How had the human race ever come to imprison in such a ceremony the most unceremonious thing in the world? But she was no longer sure of her reaction.

Exactly. Even then the possessing classes only suffer relatively. They put down their cars or close their country houses, thus adding to unemployment, but not greatly inconveniencing themselves. But the people starve. Then they will listen to you when you tell them they have nothing to lose but their chains, and when you dangle before them the bait of other people’s property the greed, the envy, which they’ve had to repress because they had no means of gratifying them, are let loose. With liberty and equality as your watchwords you can lead them to the attack. The history of the last five-and-twenty years shows that they’re bound to win. The possessing classes are enervated by their possessions, they’re humanitarian and sentimental, they have neither the will nor the courage to defend themselves; their counsels are divided, and when their only chance is in immediate and ruthless action they waste their time in recrimination. But the mob, which is the instrument of the revolutionary leaders, is a thing not of reason but of instinct, it is amenable to hypnotic suggestion and you can rouse it to frenzy by catchwords; it is an entity, and so is indifferent to the death in its ranks of such as fall; it knows neither pity nor mercy. It rejoices in destruction because in destruction it becomes conscious of its own power.

There were fireflies riding on the dark air and a dog baying on some low and far-away ledge of the cliff. The table seemed to have risen a little toward the sky like a mechanical dancing platform, giving the people around it a sense of being alone with each other in the dark universe, nourished by its only food, warmed by its only lights. And, as if a curious hushed laugh from Mrs. McKisco were a signal that such a detachment from the world had been attained, the two Divers began suddenly to warm and glow and expand, as if to make up to their guests, already so subtly assured of their importance, so flattered with politeness, for anything they might still miss from that country well left behind. Just for a moment they seemed to speak to every one at the table, singly and together, assuring them of their friendliness, their affection. And for a moment the faces turned up toward them were like the faces of poor children at a Christmas tree. Then abruptly the table broke up - the moment when the guests had been daringly lifted above conviviality into the rarer atmosphere of sentiment, was over before it could be irreverently breathed, before they had half realized it was there. But the diffused magic of the hot sweet South had withdrawn into them - the soft-pawed night and the ghostly wash of the Mediterranean far below - the magic left these things and melted into the two Divers and became part of them. Tender is the Night, Ch VII

Vim?” “Sweetheart?” The whispered endearment spoken with sleepy sensuality had Sophie’s insides fluttering. Was this what married people did? Cuddled and talked in shadowed rooms, gave each other bodily warmth as they exchanged confidences? “What troubles you about going home?” He was quiet for a long moment, his breath fanning across her neck. Sophie felt him considering his words, weighing what to tell her, if anything. “I’m not sure exactly what’s amiss, and that’s part of the problem, but my associations with the place are not at all pleasant, either.” Was that…? His lips? The glancing caress to her nape made Sophie shiver despite the cocoon of blankets. “What do you think is wrong there?” Another kiss, more definite this time. “My aunt and uncle are quite elderly, though Uncle Bert and Aunt Essie seem the type to live forever. I’ve counted on them living forever. You even taste like flowers.” Ah, God, his tongue… a slow, warm, wet swipe of his tongue below her ear, like a cat, but smoother than a cat, more deliberate. “Nobody lives forever.” The nuzzling stopped. “This is lamentably so. My aunt writes to me that a number of family heirlooms have gone missing, some valuable in terms of coin, some in terms of sentiment.” His teeth closed gently on the curve of her ear. What was this? He wasn’t kissing her, exactly, nor fondling the parts other men had tried to grope in dark corners—though Sophie wished he might try some fondling. “Do you think you might have a thief among the servants?” He slipped her earlobe into his mouth and drew on it briefly. “Perhaps, though the staff generally dates back to before the Flood. We pay excellent wages; we pension those who seek retirement, those few who seek retirement.” “Is some sneak thief in the neighborhood preying on your relations, then?” It was becoming nearly impossible to remain passively lying on her side. She wanted to be on her back, kissing him, touching his hair, his face, his chest… “Or has some doughty old retainer merely misplaced some of the silver?” Vim muttered right next to her ear. “You’ll sort it out.

They shared an image of the American Christmas--riches, reconciliations, tears, snow, success, sentiment, furs and firs, the shop windows shining like Heaven and everything good for sale.

You cannot mix up sentiment and reason.

... I’ve always been a tragically sentimental person, and Christmas time embodies that sentimentality for me. I wanted to write a song that makes me happy and makes me feel like a loved, carefree young girl at Christmas… I also believe that somewhere inside I knew it was too late to give my brother and sister peace, and my mother her wonderful life, but I could possibly give the world a Christmas classic instead.” p21

... Christmas... the apotheosis of the bourgeoisie, the season when with shining fable Heaven and Nature, in accord for once, edict and postulate us all husbands and fathers under our skins, when before an altar in the shape of a gold-plated cattle-trough man may with impunity prostrate himself in an orgy of unbridled sentimental obeisance to the fairy tale which conquered the Western world, when for seven days the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in amnesty: the whitewashing of a stipulated week leaving the page blank and pristine again for the chronicling of the fresh...

In this way, Moore managed to evoke what had eluded his fellow Knickerbockers, Washington Irving and John Pintard, in their own efforts to recapture the spirit of Christmas past: that is, the integration of the social classes in a scene of shared festivity where the poor posed no threat and gratefully accepted their place. Moore did this by replacing the cheerful poor of cherished memory not just with the children of the household but also with the magical figure of St. Nicholas himself. With this tricky maneuver Moore managed to transform what had been merely archaic and sentimental (and also patronizing to the poor) into something that can be called mythic. In order to negotiate that transformation, to create that myth, Moore had to make the two simple yet crucial changes I have described: He had to present St. Nicholas as a figure who would evoke in his hearers and readers a working-class image (and not a patrician one) and also as a figure who would act the patrician's part (and not the worker's). He had to present St. Nicholas in the role of a bishop, but without a bishop's authority to stand in judgment. In short, Moore had to present St. Nicholas as both a bishop and a worker--but without either the power of the one or the animosity of the other.

They had their Christmas-gift exchange right before he left town, and when she opened her gift and saw the boots, she wept. No one had ever given her a gift like that in her life and he enjoyed success when she kissed all over him. He took her into his arms, laughing sentimentally. “I’ve never seen you cry,” he said, holding her close, rocking her back and forth gently. “Oh, you’d have seen way too much of that a year ago….” “But these are happy tears. That’s different. That means I did good.” “You did very good,” she said. “They’re just amazing. Exactly what I would have had made for myself. Like my own skin. I could sleep in them.” “But someone could get hurt,” he reminded her with a laugh. She

Louisa dropped her forehead to her husband’s naked chest and, for the dozenth time, silently cursed her female organs for their poor scheduling. “We’ll never get to Kent if we aren’t on our way soon.” Joseph patted her bottom and stepped back. “We will not let your parents serve us breakfast, or your sisters dragoon you into their private lair. I suspect the worst offenders will be your brothers, though. I’ve never met such a lot of mother hens.” He splashed on his cedar-and-spice scent, then started laying out clothing, making trips from the wardrobe to the bed. Joseph continued striding around the bedroom in nothing but riding breeches, as casual as you please. And Louisa did please. Her husband was well endowed with muscle and masculine pulchritude, and he thought her brothers were mother hens. He had listened to her in the dark, and he had held her and rubbed her back when she hadn’t even known she could ask for those considerations. Maybe love was not a matter of ringing declarations and rhyming couplets. Maybe it wasn’t bloodred roses and dramatic sentiments. Maybe love was a pat on the bottom and a tender kiss, a shared good night’s sleep, and a man considerate enough to build a quick stop by the ducal mansion into the start of the wedding journey. ***

I am being ridiculous.” She did wave the handkerchief, but then she dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “I’ll see them all again in just a few days at the Christmas gathering, and the children too. I suppose an excess of sentiment can be forgiven. I hadn’t seen St. Just in months, and Maggie is expecting, but I’ll see a great deal of Sophie—” He hauled her against his side and gently pushed her head to his shoulder. “We’ll visit all you like, all over the realm, even the perishing West Riding if St. Just insists on ruralizing there. I did want to take you to Paris in the spring, however, and you’d like Lisbon too, even if it gets quite hot. I’m not as fond of Rome, though Sicily has all manner of ruins you might find interesting.” Her

And in the measured, sonorous lines of sentiment he offered her, in the tenderness of his hand caressing her hair, Louisa found hope that even her husband—her dark, limping, occasionally ridiculous husband—might be a little besotted too. ***

As the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the monarch is the defender of the faith—the official religion of the country, established by law and respected by sentiment. Yet when the Queen travels to Scotland, she becomes a member of the Church of Scotland, which governs itself and tolerates no supervision by the state. She doesn’t abandon the Anglican faith when she crosses the border, but rather doubles up, although no Anglican bishop ever comes to preach at Balmoral. Elizabeth II has always embraced what former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey called the “sacramental manner in which she views her own office.” She regards her faith as a duty, “not in the sense of a burden, but of glad service” to her subjects. Her faith is also part of the rhythm of her daily life. “She has a comfortable relationship with God,” said Carey. “She’s got a capacity because of her faith to take anything the world throws at her. Her faith comes from a theology of life that everything is ordered.” She worships unfailingly each Sunday, whether in a tiny chapel in the Laurentian mountains of Quebec or a wooden hut on Essequibo in Guyana after a two-hour boat ride. But “she doesn’t parade her faith,” said Canon John Andrew, who saw her frequently during the 1960s when he worked for Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey. On holidays she attends services at the parish church in Sandringham, and at Crathie outside the Balmoral gates. Her habit is to take Communion three or four times a year—at Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday, and the occasional special service—“an old-fashioned way of being an Anglican, something she was brought up to do,” said John Andrew. She enjoys plain, traditional hymns and short, straightforward sermons. George Carey regards her as “middle of the road. She treasures Anglicanism. She loves the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which is always used at Sandringham. She would disapprove of modern services, but wouldn’t make that view known. The Bible she prefers is the old King James version. She has a great love of the English language and enjoys the beauty of words. The scriptures are soaked into her.” The Queen has called the King James Bible “a masterpiece of English prose.

Try something for me, Genevieve.” “We need to find some toys,” she said as if she hadn’t heard him. “The boys will be here directly, and if we don’t entertain them, they’ll entertain themselves.” Dreadful thought. “This won’t take but a moment. I want you to curse.” Not only were her arms crossed, but she’d drawn herself up, aligned herself with some invisible, invincible posture board such as Helen of Troy might have relied upon to get all those ships launched in a single day. “I beg your pardon?” “Curse. Call him your blasted, damned cat.” Her brows knitted, making her look like one of Kesmore’s daughters. “I love Timothy.” “Of course you do.” Lucky cat. “But you do not love having to rely on his good offices for your candlelit sketches.” He prowled closer. “You do not love being shuffled about from family member to family member.” Another step, so he was almost nose to nose with her. “I daresay you do not love baking.” “I rather don’t.” He unwrapped her arms and kept her hands in his. “Genevieve.” “I do not enjoy baking in the least.” He waited, certain if he were patient, she’d rise to the challenge. The corners of her mouth quivered. “I perishing hate all the mess and heat.” “Of course you do.” “It’s a dashed nuisance, and one gets sticky.” A smile started, turning up her lips, lighting her eyes. “How sticky? “Blasted, damned sticky.” “Say it again.” She beamed at him. “Perishing, blasted, damned, damned sticky.” He wrapped his arms around her. “Well done. You must curse for me more often, Genevieve. It makes your eyes dance.” And her cursing made him happy too. As she hugged him back, it occurred to Elijah that Christmas was touted as the season for giving, though in recent years, the occasion hadn’t arisen for him to do much of that. He’d give to her. He’d give her a safe place to curse, a place to draw as she pleased, and some kisses. If he counted his approval of the mistletoe tradition, that was two holiday sentiments in one morning. Elijah

Wish me safe journey, Kesmore, and thanks for all of your hospitality.” Kesmore shoved the flask at him. “Louisa says you are an idiot, but I must be patient because you are an idiot in love with an imbecile. She says that’s the general case where tender sentiments are involved, and I am ever grateful for my countess’s guidance. Safe journey.” Kesmore

Being lost and dead he had only to lie still, and was no longer obliged to wander through the pathless taiga. Otherwise, what would have been the point in getting lost? “We’ll go to the Great Toyon!” “And why should I go to him?” asked Makar. “To be judged,” said the priest sadly, and in a somewhat sentimental tone of voice. Makar remembered that indeed after death one is supposed to appear somewhere at a judgment. He had heard it in church. The priest was right; there was no help for it, and he would have to get up. And so he rose, grumbling that there was no rest for a body even after death.

Cardinals appear when angels are near. Did anyone today even remember the old bit of folklore? Or did everyone scoot around it, avoiding such a sweet idea in the same manner they avoided stepping in potholes?

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.

Punctually at Christmas the soft plush Of sentiment snows down, embosoms all The sharp and pointed shapes of venom, shawls The hills and hides the shocking holes of this Uneven world of want and wealth, cushions With cosy wish like cotton-wool the cool Arm's-length interstices of caste and class, And into obese folds subtracts from sight All truculent acts, bleeding the world white.

I’m probably too sentimental, but I think people find each other when they’re supposed to. When they need to.

Christmas should not be treated by us as the “denial season.” One of the reasons why so many families have so many tangles and scenes during the “holidays” is that everybody expects sentimentalism to fix everything magically. But Christmas is not a “trouble-free” season. We want the scrooges and grinches in our lives to be transformed by gentle snowfall, silver bells, beautifully arranged evergreens, hot cider, and carols being sung in the middle distance. But what happens when you gather together with a bunch of other sinners, and all of them have artificially inflated expectations? What could go wrong? When confronted with the message of sentimentalism, we really do need somebody who will say, “Bah, humbug.

The bundle in his arms cooed. “It’s winter.” Vim peeled away just enough blankets to expose baby-blue eyes. “Cold is part of it, but we’re English, so we refer to this as fresh air. Repeat after me: fresh air.” “Gah.” “My sentiments, as well, truth be told, but there’s a steaming bowl of porridge in it for you if you keep your nappy clean for the next fifteen minutes.” “Bah!” Vim was still smiling when Sophie emerged from the kitchen. Her gaze went from Vim to Kit and back to Vim. “This looks like a conspiracy in progress. What have you two been up to?” “Plotting a raid on the pantry. Shall we brave the elements?” “Please.

The stipulation for a contestant on The X Factor is an uncontrollable vibrato and a great deal of cancer in the family. The show will drag its sugary slug trail of sentimentality from now until the traditional Christmas single of an overproduced 1980s ballad doused with a lachrymose orchestra. Not so much a wall of sound as a shroud of sound, dedicated to some carcinogenically defunct auntie. As Oscar Wilde so perceptively put it, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh out loud.