Barry's Blog

"Christmas is magical. Its belief, and its powers are limited, but it can make you happy, if that's what you want. It only works once a year, of course. In August, the songs sound dumb. You have to work up to it through Thanksgiving, a sort of dress rehearsal, and then suddenly it is December 24th, and there's your tree...I would love very much to receive a particular Christmas present that I can't reveal because it's too dumb. I remind myself  every year not to want it too much, but I do, and I never get it. A man my age can't simply walk into a store and buy a model train set for himself. People would talk, and one day he'd come home to find an attorney in the living room, who would tell him that his financial affairs will hereafter be managed by his nephew Vince..."                                                 -Garrison Keillor, "The Dangers of Christmas"

"There is a remarkable breakdown of taste and intelligence at Christmastime. Mature, responsible grown men wear neckties made out of holly and drink alcoholic beverages with raw egg yolks and cottage cheese in them."                   -P.J. O'Rourke

"Early in life I developed a distaste for the Cratchits that time has not sweetened. I do not think I was an embittered child, but the Cratchits' worthiness, their bravely borne poverty, their exultation over that wretched goose, disgusted me. I particularly disliked Tiny Tim (a part always played by a girl because girls had superior powers of looking moribund and worthy at the same time), and when he chirped, 'God bless us every one!', my mental response was akin to Sam Goldwyn's famous phrase, 'Include me out.' "                   -Robertson Davies 

"A little girl said she liked Santa Claus better than Jesus because 'you have to be good for Santa only at Christmas, but for Jesus you have to be good all the time.' Much of the Christmas observance at church is not far removed from that attitude."                                                                                                    -Vance Havner

"Dear Mary: Just a very hurried line...(1.) To condole with you on the loss of Fr. ________. (2.) To tell a story which puts the contrast between our feast of the Nativity and, all this ghastly "Xmas" racket at its lowest. My brother heard a woman on a bus say, as the 'bus passed a church with a Crib outside it, 'Oh Lor'!' They bring religion into everything. Look...they're dragging it even into Christmas now!' Love and sympathy from us both. Yours, Jack"                                                            -C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

"It seems, then," said Tirian, smiling himself, "that the Stable seen from within and the Stable seen from without are two different places." "Yes," said Lord Digory. "It's inside is bigger than its outside." "Yes," said Queen Lucy. "In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world."                                                                                                                    -"The Last Battle," from The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis

Christmas Greetings,

Barry Morrow

 
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