Dates and Celebrations

‘God bless us every one!’ said Tiny Tim.

The times they are a-changin’.

‘Bah,’ said Scrooge. ‘Humbug!’

I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.

They gave it me,—for an un-birthday present.

I have often thought, says Sir Roger, it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the Middle of Winter.

I saw three ships come sailing by, Come sailing by, come sailing by, I saw three ships come sailing by, On New Year’s Day in the morning.

Little Jack Horner sat in the corner, Eating a Christmas pie. He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum, And said, “What a good boy am I!”

When she introduces me to her parents back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie, should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa and not ask Where’s the bathroom?

A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year.

In the bleak midwinter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, Long ago.

Heap on more wood!—the wind is chill; But let it whistle as it will, We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.

This day Time winds th’ exhausted chain, To run the twelvemonth’s length again.

This is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of Heav’n’s eternal King, Of wedded maid and virgin mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring; For so the holy sages once did sing, That He our deadly forfeit should release, And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.

It was the winter wild While the Heav’n-born child All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies.

The firstling of the infant year.

It faded on the crowing of the cock. Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions.

Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light.

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers.

[H]ard as I try, daddy-o, I really do not like concert singers. They are always singing in some foreign language.

I have had prayers answered—most strangely so sometimes—but I think our heavenly Father’s lovingkindness has been even more evident in what He has refused me.