Oh, gosh.  Tired. One more gift to wrap, some little favors to buy (chocolates or Christmas ornaments?) and must clean the house, again, before 15 descend Christmas Eve and another ten on Christmas night.

So — in honor of the holidays.  Let’s read lovely words from some gifted writers.  A Christmas Compendium.  Beautiful thoughts wrapped in white tissue paper, placed in small boxes, and wrapped up tightly with flowering silver bows.  My gift to you.

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Christmas isn’t a season.  It’s a feeling.
Edna Ferber

England was merry England, when
Old Christmas brought his sports again.
‘Twas Christmas broached the mightiest ale;
‘Twas Christmas told the merriest tale;
A Christmas gambol oft could cheer
The poor man’s heart through half the year.
Sir Walter Scott, Lochinvar

I do like Christmas on the whole. ..  In its clumsy way it does approach Peace and Goodwill.  But it is clumsier every year.
E.M. Forster

Is there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?
Charlie Brown

Sir, you ask me . . .
Sir,
You ask me to come and spend a week with you, which means I would be near my daughter, whom I adore.  You who live with her know how rarely I see her, how much her presence delights me, and I’m touched that you should ask me to come and see her.  All the same I’m not going to accept your kind invitation, for the time being at any rate. The reason is that my pink cactus is probably going to flower.  It’s a very rare plant I’ve been given, and I’m told that in our climate it flowers only once every four years.  Now, I am already a very old woman, and if I went away when my pink cactus is about to flower, I am certain I shouldn’t see it flower again.

So I beg you, sir, to accept my sincere thanks and my regrets, together with my kind regards.

This note, signed Sidonie Colette, nee Landoy was written by my mother to one of my husbands, the second.  A year later, she died, at the age of seventy-seven.

Whenever I feel myself inferior to everything about me, threatened by my own mediocrity, frightened by the discovery that a muscle is losing its strength, a desire its power, or a pain the keen edge of its bite, I can still hold up my head and say to myself: “I am the daughter of the woman who wrote that letter- that letter and so many more that I have kept.  This one tells me in ten lines that at the age of seventy-six she was planning journeys and undertaking them, but that waiting for the possible bursting into bloom of a tropical flower held everything up and silenced even her heart, made for love. . .”

Colette, Earthly Paradise

Merry Christmas, Dear Readers.