A couple of quotes for Christmas

Christmas is approaching at a breakneck pace. I've been doing my best to get ready and I'm not doing such a hot job of it. As always when I need a booster shot of holiday spirit, I re-read A Christmas Carol by Dickens. It has one of my favorite passages about the holiday. I also love the carol It Came Upon the Midnight Clear. The third and fourth verses - which nobody ever sings - are my favorites. Those two items usually do the trick for me. Here they are...


From A Christmas Carol...

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew. "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round--apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that--as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

From It Came Upon the Midnight Clear...

O ye beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow;
Look now, for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing;
Oh rest beside the weary road
And hear the angels sing.

For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophets seen of old,
When with the ever-circling years
Shall come the time foretold,
When the new heaven and earth shall own
The Prince of Peace, their King,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.

(By the way, you can read or download full text versions of A Christmas Carol from Project Gutenberg, one of the coolest sites on the web, if you ask me.)