Thomas Kinkade - The Light of Christmas

R emembrance, like a candle,
burns brightest at Christmastime.

Charles Dickens

N o holiday has the power to captivate our senses or dominate our mspanories quite like Christmas. The sights, smells, and sounds of Christmas are burned into our consciousness in childhood, and with each passing year, another layer of joyous mspanories is added.

T he smell of fresh-baked holiday treats and freshly cut pine boughs; the merry, riotous sound of children giggling with anticipation and screaming with delight; the sight of holiday lights on a new-fallen snow or the warm glow of firelight cast from a room where family and dear friends gatherall of these images delight our senses and fill our mspanories. Christmas is a dayand a seasonlike no other.

I hope this collection of paintings and quotations from the season helps inspire your own fond mspanories of Christmas just as it has my own.

H ave a Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year,

C hristmas is here,
Merry old Christmas,
Gift-bearing Christmas,
Day of grand memories,
King of the year!

Washington Irving

C hristmas...

is not an external event at all
but a piece of ones home that
one carries in ones heart.

Freya Stark

W here we love is home
home that our feet may leave,
but not our hearts.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

C hristmas 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.

Bess Streeter Aldrich

H appy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

Charles Dickens

T radition
does not mean

that the living are dead

but that the dead are living.

G. K. Chestertson

R ecall it as often
as you wish;
a happy memory
never wears out.

Libbie Fudim

B lessed is the season
which engages
the whole world
in a conspiracy
of love.

Hamilton Wright Mabie

A holiday gives one a chance
to look backward and forward,
to reset oneself
by an inner compass.

May Sarton

C hristmas!
Tis the season
for kindling the fire

of hospitality in the hall,
the genial fire
of charity in the heart.

Washington Irving

H eap on more wood!
the wind is chill;
But let it whistle
as it will,

Well keep our Christmas
merry still.

Sir Walter Scott

C hristmas, children,
is not a date.

It is a state of mind.

Mary Ellen Chase

A t Christmas
play and make good cheer,
For Christmas comes
but once a year.

Thomas Tusser

O sons of the morning,
rejoice at the sight.

Everywhere, everywhere,
Christmas tonight!

Phillips Brooks

V illagers all, this frosty tide,
Let your doors
swing open wide,

Though wind may follow,
and snow beside,

Yet draw us in by your fire to bide;
Joy shall be yours
in the morning!

Kenneth Grahame

F or somehow,
not only at Christmas,

But all the long year through,
The joy that you give to others
Is the joy that comes back to you.

John Greenleaf Whittier

A t Christmas
I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow
in Mays newfangled mirth;
But like of each thing
that in season grows.

William Shakespeare

I heard the bells
on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar
carols play,

And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth,
goodwill to men!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

S mall cheer
and great welcome
makes a merry feast.

William Shakespeare

F or not alone
at Christmastime
comes holiday and cheer,
For one who loves a little child
has Christmas all the year.

Florence Evelyn Dratt