By Scott Robertson
Last week in this space, I compiled a collection of quotes and sayings regarding Christmas. All were originally said or written before most of us were born by wordsmiths from Benjamin Franklin to Charles Dickens to Sir Walter Scott to E.B. White. All, I noted, were “imbued with a quiet, earnest dignity you rarely find today.” This is not, however, to say that all contemporary thought on Christmas is undignified or lacking in depth and sincerity. Consider:
Want to keep Christ in Christmas? Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Forgive the guilty. Welcome the unwanted. Care for the ill. Love your enemies. Do unto others as you would have done unto you. ― Steve Maraboli
He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree. ― Roy L. Smith
One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don’t clean it up too quickly. ― Andy Rooney
Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we’re here for something else besides ourselves. ― Eric Sevareid
When did wishing someone a Merry Christmas become politically incorrect? ― Suzanne Woods Fisher
Christmas, my child, is love in action. ― Dale Evans Rogers
Unless we make Christmas an occasion to share our blessings, all the snow in Alaska won’t make it ‘white.’ ― Bing Crosby
God is here. This truth should fill our lives, and every Christmas should be for us a new and special meeting with God, when we allow his light and grace to enter deep into our soul. ― Josemaría Escrivá
Christmas is a bridge. We need bridges as the river of time flows past. Today’s Christmas should mean creating happy hours for tomorrow and reliving those of yesterday. ― Gladys Taber
Christmas is the keeping-place for memories of our innocence. ― Joan Mills
Life is the season for loving and caring, for laughing and caroling, giving and sharing. ― Richelle E. Goodrich
There are few things emptier than the space where a Christmas tree used to be. ― Kate Lord Brown
Christmas is the most profoundly human feast of faith, because it allows us to feel most deeply the humanity of God. The crib has a unique power to show us what it means to say that God wished to be “Immanuel”—a “God with us,” a God whom we may address in intimate language, because he encounters us as a child. ― Pope Benedict XVI
Christmases are never the same. They change from year to year, and they are never really perfect, no matter how hard we try to force them to be so. What is perfect is the miracle in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago and the love of God that continues to burst through the chaos of human imperfection; Christmas is finding the Christ Child radiant beneath the daily grime of life. ― Julie K. Hogan
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. ― John 3:16
I cheated. That last one’s not contemporary at all. But it’s the one that really matters, isn’t it? Merry Christmas from all of us at Johnson City News & Neighbor to you and yours.
