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48 Joyous Christmas Quotes to Brighten the Season

Christmas Quotes

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” . . .

Here, then, are 48 joyous Christmas quotes to brighten the season and get you into the Christmas spirit:

1. “I sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day. We try to crowd into it the long arrears of kindliness and humanity of the whole year. As for me, I like to take my Christmas a little at a time, all through the year. And thus I drift along into the holidays – let them overtake me unexpectedly – waking up some fine morning and suddenly saying to myself: ‘Why, this is Christmas Day!’” ~ David Grayson

2. “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas;
Soon the bells will start,
And the thing that will make them ring
Is the carol that you sing
Right within your heart.”

~ Meredith Willson, “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas”

3. “Christmas gift suggestions: to your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.”

~ Oren Arnold

Christmas quotes

5. “Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.” ~ Peg Bracken

6. “Instead of being a time of unusual behavior, Christmas is perhaps the only time in the year when people can obey their natural impulses and express their true sentiments without feeling self-conscious and, perhaps, foolish. Christmas, in short, is about the only chance a man has to be himself.” ~ Francis C. Farley

7. “It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.” ~ W.T. Ellis

8. “Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale

9. “Christmas now surrounds us,
Happiness is everywhere
Our hands are busy with many tasks
As carols fill the air.”

~ Shirley Sallay

10. “Each sight, each sound of Christmas
And fragrances sublime
Make hearts and faces happy
This glorious Christmastime.”

~ Carice Williams

Related: 19 Christmas Stories and Poems by Famous Authors

11. “Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love!” ~ Hamilton Wright Mabie

12. “Christmas is not as much about opening our presents as opening our hearts.” ~ Janice Maeditere

13. “Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.” ~ Author unknown, attributed to a 7-year-old named Bobby

14. “I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.” ~ Harlan Miller

15. “Christmas is the season of joy, of holiday greetings exchanged, of gift-giving, and of families united.” ~ Norman Vincent Peale

16. “Christmas is most truly Christmas when we celebrate it by giving the light of love to those who need it most.” ~ Ruth Carter Stapleton

17. “Good news from heaven the angels bring,
Glad tidings to the earth they sing:
To us this day a child is given,
To crown us with the joy of heaven.”

~ Martin Luther

18. “The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.” ~ Burton Hillis

Related: 50 Christmas Traditions For Having Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

19. “Probably the reason we all go so haywire at Christmas time with the endless unrestrained and often silly buying of gifts is that we don’t quite know how to put our love into words.” ~ Harlan Miller

20. “For centuries men have kept an appointment with Christmas. Christmas means fellowship, feasting, giving and receiving, a time of good cheer, home.” ~ W. J. Tucker

21. “Christmas is not just a time for festivity and merry making. It is more than that. It is a time for the contemplation of eternal things. The Christmas spirit is a spirit of giving and forgiving.” ~ J. C. Penney

22. “I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

23. “I love the Christmas-tide, and yet,
I notice this, each year I live;
I always like the gifts I get,
But how I love the gifts I give!”

~ Carolyn Wells


24. “Mankind is a great, an immense family. This is proved by what we feel in our hearts at Christmas.” ~ Pope John XXIII

25. “Let us have music for Christmas…
Sound the trumpet of joy and rebirth;
Let each of us try, with a song in our hearts,
To bring peace to men on earth.”

~ Mildred L. Jarrell

26. “Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.” ~ Calvin Coolidge

Related: Eight Ways to Beat the Holiday Blues

27. “I don’t think Christmas is necessarily about things. It’s about being good to one another, it’s about the Christian ethic, it’s about kindness.” ~ Carrie Fisher

28. “What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.” ~ Agnes M. Pharo

29. “May Christmas lend a special charm
To all you chance to do.
And may the season light your way
To hopes and dreams anew.”

~ Garnett Ann Schultz, “My Christmas Wish”

30. “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know,
Where the tree tops glisten
And children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow.”

~ Irving Berlin

31. “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” ~ Charles Dickens, Ebeneezer Scrooge, A Christmas Carol

32. “And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.” ~ Dr Seuss

33. “The merry family gatherings–
The old, the very young;
The strangely lovely way they
Harmonize in carols sung.

For Christmas is tradition time–
Traditions that recall
The precious memories down the years,
The sameness of them all.”

~ Helen Lowrie Marshall

34. “Christmas is forever, not for just one day,
for loving, sharing, giving, are not to put away
like bells and lights and tinsel, in some box upon a shelf.
The good you do for others is good you do yourself.”

~ Norman Wesley Brooks, “Let Every Day Be Christmas”

Related: 25 Activities Filled With Christmas Cheer

35. “This time of year means being kind
to everyone we meet,
To share a smile with strangers
we may pass along the street.”

~ Betty Black

36. “Until one feels the spirit of Christmas, there is no Christmas. All else is outward display–so much tinsel and decorations. For it isn’t the holly, it isn’t the snow. It isn’t the tree not the firelight’s glow. It’s the warmth that comes to the hearts of men when the Christmas spirit returns again.” ~ Unknown

37. “There is a Christmas song upon the air,
There is a joy innate within the heart;
An inner sense of peace, a holy light
Illumines life and sets these days apart.”

~ Edna Greene Hines

38. “I am not alone at all, I thought. I was never alone at all. And that, of course, is the message of Christmas. We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest, the wind coldest, the world seemingly most indifferent. For this is still the time God chooses.” ~ Taylor Caldwell

39. “Christmas in Bethlehem. The ancient dream: a cold, clear night made brilliant by a glorious star, the smell of incense, shepherds and wise men falling to their knees in adoration of the sweet baby, the incarnation of perfect love.” ~ Lucinda Franks

40. “Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world – stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death – and that the blessed life which began in Bethlehem nineteen hundred years ago is the image and brightness of the Eternal Love? Then you can keep Christmas.” ~ Henry Van Dyke

41. “Ask your children two questions this Christmas. First: What do you want to give to others for Christmas? Second: What do you want for Christmas? The first fosters generosity of heart and an outward focus. The second can breed selfishness if not tempered by the first.”

~ Author Unknown

42. “Bless us Lord, this Christmas, with quietness of mind; Teach us to be patient and always to be kind.” ~ Helen Steiner Rice

43. “Christmas! The very word brings joy to our hearts. No matter how we may dread the rush, the long Christmas lists for gifts and cards to be bought and given–when Christmas Day comes there is still the same warm feeling we had as children, the same warmth that enfolds our hearts and our homes.” ~ Joan Winmill Brown

44. “Christmas – that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance – a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.” ~ Augusta E. Rundel

Related: 10 Ways to Have a Peaceful Christmas

45. “Christmas day is a day of joy and charity. May God make you very rich in both.” ~ Phillips Brooks

46. “Santa Claus is anyone who loves another and seeks to make them happy; who gives himself by thought or word or deed in every gift that he bestows.” Edwin Osgood Grover

Christmas quotes

47. “Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone.” ~ Charles Schulz

48. “Christmas, my child, is love in action.” ~ Dale Evans

49. “Off to one side sits a group of shepherds. They sit silently on the floor, perhaps perplexed, perhaps in awe, no doubt in amazement. Their night watch had been interrupted by an explosion of light from heaven and a symphony of angels. God goes to those who have time to hear him–and so on this cloudless night he went to simple shepherds.” ~ Max Lucado

50. “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, and do unto others as you would have done unto you.” ~ Steve Maraboli

51. “My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that?” ~ Bob Hope

52. “Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.” – Laura Ingalls Wilder

53. “I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, “Christmas Bells”

54. “Christmas in Bethlehem. The ancient dream: a cold, clear night made brilliant by a glorious star, the smell of incense, shepherds and wise men falling to their knees in adoration of the sweet baby, the incarnation of perfect love.” – LUCINDA FRANKS, New York Times, Dec. 23, 1984

55. “Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. If we think on these things, there will be born in us a Savior and over us will shine a star sending its gleam of hope to the world.” – CALVIN COOLIDGE, Presidential message, Dec. 25, 1927

56. “I truly believe that if we keep telling the Christmas story, singing the Christmas songs, and living the Christmas spirit, we can bring joy and happiness and peace to this world.” – Norman Vincent Peale

57. “They err who thinks Santa Claus comes down through the chimney; he really enters through the heart.” Paul M. Ell

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  • JJ Wong January 19, 2014, 1:01 am

    Thanks Marelisa for the great sharing. My favorite quote would be No.3 by Oren Arnold. A wonderful quotes that speak out a lot about how to deal with relationship, to ourself, and to people around us. 🙂