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The post International Days List first appeared on The World of English.

Christmas poems

Carl William Brown — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 10:38:55 +0000

Christmas poems for a merry atmosphere

Christmas poems for a magic holiday atmosphere, to enlighten and warm up your festive time by English-culture.com blog and Carl William Brown. Merry Christmas!

Christmas tries to renew our hope, reminding us of what is dearest to our hearts, but the season also awakens our childhood memories and therefore Christmas has the poetic power of enphasizing in our mind the spiritual memories of what is drammaticaly already passed away, of what is tragigally lost for ever and will never come back again. That’s why its atmosphere is a mixture of joy and sadness, and that’s why is very useful to remember this Latin quote, in tristitia hilaris, in hilaritate tristis.
Carl William Brown

Let Every Day Be Christmas

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.

Peace on Earth, good will to men,
kind thoughts and words of cheer,
are things we should use often
and not just once a year.

Remember too the Christ-child, grew up to be a man;
to hide him in a cradle, is not our dear Lord’s plan.
So keep the Christmas spirit, share it with others far and near,
from week to week and month to month, throughout the entire year!

Norman Wesley Brooks

Where are the children who haven’t got their Christmas tree
with silver snow, fairy lights
and chocolate fruits?
Hurry up, hurry up, gathering,
We go in Chritmas trees land,
I know where it is.

Gianni Rodari

Whose heart doth hold the Christmas glow
Hath little need of Mistletoe;
Who bears a smiling grace of mien
Need waste no time on wreaths of green;
Whose lips have words of comfort spread
Needs not the holly – berries red –
His very presence scatters wide
The spirit of the Christmastide.

John Kendrick Bangs

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

It was the calm and silent night!
Seven hundred years and fifty-three
Had Rome been growing up to might
And now was queen of land and sea.
No sound was heard of clashing wars,
Peace brooded o’er the hushed domain;
Apollo, Pallas, Jove and Mars,
Held undisturbed their ancient reign,
In the solemn midnight,
Centuries ago.

Alfred Domett

It is the Christmas time:
And up and down ‘twixt heaven and earth,
In glorious grief and solemn mirth,
The shining angels climb.

Dinah Maria Mulock

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

‘Tis blessed to bestow, and yet,
Could we bestow the gifts we get,
And keep the ones we give away,
How happy were our Christmas day!

Carolyn Wells

The earth has grown old with its burden of care,
But at Christmas it is always young;
The heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair,
And its soul, full of music, breaks forth on the air
When the song of the angels is sung.
It is coming, Old Earth, it is coming tonight!
On the snowflakes which cover thy sod
The feet of the Christ-child fall gentle and white,
And the voice of the Christ-child tells out with delight
That mankind are the children of God.

Phillips Brooks

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let Christmas not become a thing
Merely of merchant’s trafficking,
Of tinsel, bell and holly wreath
And surface pleasure, but beneath
The childish glamour, let us find
Nourishment for soul and mind.
Let us follow kinder ways
Through our teeming human maze,
And help the age of peace to come
From a Dreamer’s martyrdom.

Madeline Morse

Christmas Holidays

Along the Woodford road there comes a noise
Of wheels, and Mr. Rounding’s neat post-chaise
Struggles along, drawn by a pair of bays,
With Reverend Mr. Crow and six small boys,
Who ever and anon declare their joys
With trumping horns and juvenile huzzas,
At going home to spend their Christmas days,
And changing learning’s pains for pleasure’s toys.
Six weeks elapse, and down the Woodford way
A heavy coach drags six more heavy souls,
But no glad urchins shout, no trumpets bray,
The carriage makes a halt, the gate-bell tolls,
And little boys walk in as dull and mum
As six new scholars to the Deaf and Dumb!

Thomas Hood

A White Christmas

‘Twas the night before christmas.
With a blanket of white.
That covered the earth all through the night.
The trees sparkled like diamonds.
With a glitter so bright.
That each little twinkle made its own christmas light.
A hope and a prayer a white christmas would be.
Awaiting the dawn so all could see.
The beauty and joy a white christmas does bring.
To the holiday season as carolers sing.
For twas the night before Christmas.
God answered your prayer.
With a blanket of white.
Placed with God’s loving care.”

Carla Jean Laglia Esely

Christmas poetical decorated atmosphere

Christmas At The Orphanage

But if they’d give us toys and twice the stuff most
parents splurge on the average kid, orphans, I submit, need more than enough;
in fact, stacks wrapped with our names nearly hid
the tree: these sparkling allotments yearly
guaranteed a lack of – what? – family? –

I knew exactly what it was I missed as we were lined up number rank and file:
to share my pals’ tearing open their piles
meant sealing the self, the child that wanted
to scream at all You stole those gifts from me;
whose birthday is worth such words? The wish-lists
they’d made us write out in May lay granted
against starred branches. I said I’m sorry.

Bill Knott

Christmas Past

Oh happy days, the snow fell over-night,
we have a white Christmas in our sight.
Only a few more days and nights,
Christmas will shine bright of white.

Remember those beautiful Christmas Eves,
when we gathered round our colorful trees.
Remember when we caroled down the street,
sang Christmas songs oh so sweet.

Memories are precious let’s not forget,
don’t do anything you might regret.
Christmas is the time of year to share,
to treasure family far and near.

This Christmas with the lights shining bright,
reflecting God’s blanket of white.
Sing sweet songs in memory,
past Christmas’s history.

Melvina Germain

Read also our other posts on Christmas ;

Christmas quotes ;

Best Christmas songs ;

Christmas tree origin and quotes ;

Traditional Christmas Carols ;

Christmas markets in England ;

Christmas markets in America ;

Christmas jokes ;

Christmas cracker jokes ;

An Essasy on Christmas by Chesterton ;

Entertainment

Thoughts and reflections on family and relatives

The post Christmas poems first appeared on The World of English.

Cristmas carols

Carl William Brown — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 10:52:23 +0000

Christmas Carols Merry Atmosphere

Christmas Carols, traditional popular songs and poems with videos, music and decorations, html or pdf version, holy offered by the World of English, the Daimon Club, the Fortattack crew, Aforismi celebri and Carl William Brown.

Twas the Night before Christmas Poem. Clement Clarke Moore (1779 – 1863) wrote the poem Twas the night before Christmas also called “A Visit from St. Nicholas” in 1822. It is now the tradition in many American families to read the poem every Christmas Eve.

The poem ‘Twas the night before Christmas’ has redefined our image of Christmas and Santa Claus. Prior to the creation of the story of ‘Twas the night before Christmas’ St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children, had never been associated with a sleigh or reindeers!

Clement Moore, the author of the poem Twas the night before Christmas, was a reticent man and it is believed that a family friend, Miss H. Butler, sent a copy of the poem to the New York Sentinel who published the poem. The condition of publication was that the author of Twas the night before Christmas was to remain anonymous.

Twas the Night before Christmas Poem

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tinny reindeer.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

“Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!”

Silent Night

Silent night! holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
round yon virgin mother and child,
Holy infant so tender and mild,
sleep in heavenly peace!

Silent night! holy night!
Shepherds quake at the sight;
glories stream from heaven afar,
heavenly hosts sing Alleluia,
Christ, the Saviour, is born!

Silent night! holy night!
Son of God, love’s pure light
radiant beams from thy holy face,
with the dawn of redeeming grace,
Jesus, Lord at thy birth.

All I Want For Christmas

Everybody stops
and stares at me
These two teeth are
gone as you can see
I don’t know just who
to blame for this catastrophe!
But my one wish on Christmas Eve
is as plain as it can be!

All I want for Christmas
is my two front teeth,
my two front teeth,
see my two front teeth!

Gee, if I could only
have my two front teeth,
then I could be with you
“Merry Christmas.”
It seems so long since I could say,
“Sister Susie sitting on a thistle!”

Gosh oh gee, how happy I’d be,
if I could only whistle (thhhh)

All I want for Christmas
is my two front teeth,
my two front teeth,
see my two front teeth.
Gee, if I could only
have my two front teeth,
then I could wish you
“Merry Christmas.”

Deck the Halls

Deck the halls with boughs of holly
Fa la la la la la la la la
‘Tis the season to be jolly,
Fa la la la la la la la la
Don we now our gay apparel,
Fa la la la la la la la la
Troll the ancient Yuletide carol,
Fa la la la la la la la la.

Fast away the old year passes,
Fa la la la la la la la la
Hail the new, ye lads and lasses,
Fa la la la la la la la la
Sing we joyous all together,
Fa la la la la la la la la
Heedless of the wind and weather,
Fa la la la la la la la la.

Here Comes Santa Claus

Here comes Santa Claus!
Here comes Santa Claus!
Right down Santa Claus Lane!
Vixen and Blitzen and all his reindeer
are pulling on the reins.
Bells are ringing, children singing;
All is merry and bright.
Hang your stockings and say your prayers,
‘Cause Santa Claus comes tonight.

Here comes Santa Claus!
Here comes Santa Claus!
Right down Santa Claus Lane!
He’s got a bag that is filled with toys
for the boys and girls again.
Hear those sleigh bells jingle jangle,
What a beautiful sight.
Jump in bed, cover up your head,
‘Cause Santa Claus comes tonight.

Frosty The Snowman

Frosty the snowman was a jolly happy soul
With a corncob pipe and a button nose
and two eyes made out of coal

Frosty the snowman is a fairy tale they say
He was made of snow but the children
know how he came to life one day
There must have been some magic in that
old silk hat they found
For when they placed it on his head
he began to dance around

Frosty the snowman
was alive as he could be
And the children say he could laugh
and play just the same as you and me
Thumpetty thump thump
thumpety thump thump
Look at Frosty go
Thumpetty thump thump
thumpety thump thump
Over the hills of snow

Frosty the snowman knew
the sun was hot that day
So he said
“Let’s run and
we’ll have some fun
now before I melt away”
Down to the village
with a broomstick in his hand
Running here and there all
around the square saying
Catch me if you can
He led them down the streets of town
right to the traffic cop
And he only paused a moment when
he heard him holler “Stop!”

For Frosty the snow man
had to hurry on his way
But he waved goodbye saying
“Don’t you cry
I’ll be back again some day”
Thumpetty thump thump
thumpety thump thump
Look at Frosty go
Thumpetty thump thump
thumpety thump thump
Over the hills of snow

Merry Christmas Carol Postcard

Jingle Bells

Dashing through the snow
In a one-horse open sleigh
Through the fields we go
Laughing all the way.
Bells on bob-tail ring
Making spirits bright
What fun it is to ride and sing
A sleighing song tonight.

chorus: Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way,
Oh what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh, O
Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way,
Oh what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh.

A day or two ago
I thought I’d take a ride
And soon Miss Fanny Bright
Was seated by my side;
The horse was lean and lank
Misfortune seemed his lot,
We ran into a drifted bank
And there we got upsot.

A day or two ago
The story I must tell
I went out on the snow
And on my back I fell;
A gent was riding by
In a one-horse open sleigh
He laughed at me as
I there sprawling laid
But quickly drove away.

Now the ground is white,
Go it while you’re young,
Take the girls along
And sing this sleighing song.
Just bet a bob-tailed bay,
Two-forty as his speed,
Hitch him to an open sleigh
and crack! You’ll take the lead.

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play
And mild and sweet the words repeat,
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had roll’d along th’ unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bow’d my head:
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong, and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

‘Til ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

Jolly Old Saint Nicholas

Jolly old Saint Nicholas,
Lean your ear this way!
Don’t you tell a single soul
What I’m going to say;
Christmas Eve is coming soon;
Now, you dear old man,
Whisper what you’ll bring to me;
Tell me if you can.

When the clock is striking twelve,
When I’m fast asleep,
Down the chimney broad and black,
With your pack you’ll creep;
All the stockings you will find
Hanging in a row;
Mine will be the shortest one,
You’ll be sure to know.

Johnny wants a pair of skates;
Susy wants a dolly;
Nellie wants a story book;
She thinks dolls are folly;
As for me, my little brain
Isn’t very bright;
Choose for me, old Santa Claus,
What you think is right.

See the decorated complete Carols page with also the PDF file

Great quotes on family and relatives

Carl William Brown — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 13:59:15 +0000

Great quotes on family and relatives

Great quotes on family and relatives, a collection of authorial aphorisms on the fundamental core of society, even if on the whole it is not always idyllic.

A family in harmony will prosper in everything.
Chinese Proverb

There are only two families in the world, the haves and the have-nots.
Miguel De Cervantes

The family is the school of duties… founded on love.
Felix Adler

The babe at first feeds upon the mother’s bosom, but it is always on her heart.
Henry Ward Beecher

Close relatives, just like shoes, are the ones that cause the most trouble.
Carl William Brown

A writer is always unwelcome at the family table. Because we notice things. And then we use them.
Elizabeth Hardwick

Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.
Anthony Brandt

The parents age must be remembered, both for joy and anxiety.
Confucius

Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances… in short, by the influence of woman, in the lofty character of wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy.
Charles Dickens

The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.
James G. Frazer

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.
Richard Bach

The family spirit has rendered man carnivorous.
Francis Picabia

All happy families resemble each other, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo tolstoy

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Francis Bacon

Cruel is the strife of brothers.
Aristotle

To be generalists, we could say that we are all children of God, that is, of an unknown father.
Carl William Brown

Family traditions counter alienation and confusion. They help us define who we are; they provide something steady, reliable and safe in a confusing world.
Susan Lieberman

Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children.
Samuel Johnson

The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.
Mario Puzo

Family … the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.
August Strindberg

The family uses people, not for what they are, nor for what they are intended to be, but for what it wants them for? its own uses. It thinks of them not as what God has made them, but as the something which it has arranged that they shall be.
Florence Nightingale

The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children. The mighty abstract idea I have of beauty in all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness.
John Keats

Man is certainly an animal at least as stupid as his lower relatives, only he is also dangerously and destructively vain.
Carl William Brown

Family values are a little like family vacations -? subject to changeable weather and remembered more fondly with the passage of time. Though it rained all week at the beach, it’s often the momentary rainbows that we remember.
Leslie Dreyfous

The family you come from isn’t as important as the family you’re going to have.
Ring Lardner

So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty. All other pacts of love or fear derive from it and are modeled upon it.
Haniel Long

He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows.
Jeremy Taylor

All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Count Leo Tolstoy

Family is the most important thing in the world.
Princess Diana

A mother’s love is fashioned after God’s enduring love. It is endless and unfailing like the love of Him above.
Helen Steiner Rice

I would rather start a family than finish one.
Don Marquis

Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we’ve put it in an impossible situation.
Margaret Mead

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
H. L. Mencken

In every dispute between parent and child, both cannot be right, but they may be, and usually are, both wrong. It is this situation which gives family life its peculiar hysterical charm.
Isaac Rosenfeld

At funerals, the dead are the ones who feel better; at least they avoid the priests’ bullshit and the relatives’ gossip.
Carl William Brown

Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.
Charles M. Schulz

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

A family with an old person has a living treasure of gold.
Chinese Proverb

If the family were a boat, it would be a canoe that makes no progress unless everyone paddles.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Love makes a family.
Gigi Kaeser

A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another.
Buddha

If Mr. Vincent Price were to be co-starred with Miss Bette Davis in a story by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe directed by Mr. Roger Corman, it could not fully express the pent-up violence and depravity of a single day in the life of the average family.
Quentin Crisp

Families are about love overcoming emotional torture.
Matt Groening

I learned about the strength you can get from a close family life. I learned to keep going, even in bad times. I learned not to despair, even when my world was falling apart. I learned that there are no free lunches. And I learned the value of hard work.
Lee Iacocca

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
John Paul II

When I do something in my family because I really enjoy it, then my duty has become my pleasure. And it is a pleasure for all the people around me.
Dr. Jess Lair

Sisters are always drying their hair. Locked into rooms, alone, they pose at the mirror, shoulders bare, trying this way and that their hair, or fly importunate down the stair to answer the telephone.
Phyllis McGinley

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty.
Ann Oakley

In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.
V. S. Pritchett

God, Country, and Family, but above all Money, these are the cornerstones of hypocrisy.
Carl William Brown

The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.
George Santayana

A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family and, often, is all that remains of it.
Susan Sontag

The hatred of relatives is the most violent.
Publius Cornelius Tacitus

Adam was the luckiest man; he had no mother-in-law.
Mark Twain

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
Oscar Wilde

A woman can take care of the family. It takes a man to provide structure. To provide stability. Not that a woman can’t provide stability, I’m not saying that… It does take a father, though.
Tom Delay

Better a loving single-parent family than a ‘conventional’ family where the parents hate each other and the father is a demagogue.
Moby

Frankly, I’m fed up with politicians in Washington lecturing the rest of us about family values. Our families have values. But our government doesn’t.
Bill clinton

If your family tree does not fork, you might be a redneck.
Jeff Foxworthy

He didn’t dare to, because his father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to drop dead if anybody hurt his feelings. You may have noticed that people with weak hearts are the tyrants of English married life.
George Bernard Shaw

No matter how many communes anybody invents, the family always creeps back.
Margaret Mead

The holy restricted family: A loves B, somehow, and is loved back, one way or another! Neither of them gives a damn about the rest of the alphabet!
Carl William Brown

Family life is not a computer program that runs on its own; it needs continual input from everyone.
Neil Kurshan

Family is what grounds you.
Angelina Jolie

A close relative is one you see occasionally between family funerals.
Author Unknown

Our relatives are ours by chance, but we can choose our friends.
Jacques Delille

Lord, confound this surly sister, blight her brow with blotch and blister, cramp her larynx, lung and liver, in her guts a galling give her.
J. M. Synge

A friend who is near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative.
George Ade

Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its center and ornament, and this paradise is not secure until children appear to animate and complete the picture.
Amos Bronson Alcott

Rarely do members of the same family grow up under the same roof.
Richard Bach

You leave home to seek your fortune and, when you get it, you go home and share it with your family.
Anita Baker

There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.
Henry Ward Beecher

You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren’t dying. They’re merging into big conglomerates.
Erma Bombeck

Never did I think that I became family entertainment.
Jimmy Buffet

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
George Burns

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

The parents age must be remembered, both for joy and anxiety.
Confucius

Parents: persons who spend half their time worrying how a child will turn out, and the rest of the time wondering when a child will turn in.
Ted Cook

Alternatives to marriage and the traditional family: cohabitation, communes, celibacy, vows, suicide…
Carl William Brown

The family is the nucleus of civilization.
William J. Durant

What a man sows, that shall he and his relations reap.
Clarissa Graves

Nor need we power or splendor, wide hall or lordly dome; the good, the true, the tender — these form the wealth of home.
Sarah J. Hale

The striking point about our model family is not simply the compete-compete, consume-consume style of life it urges us to follow. The striking point, in the face of all the propaganda, is how few Americans actually live this way.
Louise Kapp Howe

A good many family trees are shady.
Robert Elliott Gonzales

The Family is the Country of the heart.
Giuseppe Mazzini

The family is the basic cell of government: it is where we are trained to believe that we are human beings or that we are chattel, it is where we are trained to see the sex and race divisions and become callous to injustice even if it is done to ourselves, to accept as biological a full system of authoritarian government.
Gloria Steinem

Families aren’t easy to join. They’re like an exclusive country club where membership makes impossible demands and the dues for an outsider are exorbitant.
Erma Bombeck

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other.
Freya Stark

Family… the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house — fathers, and a hell for children.
August J. Strindberg

Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.
Martin Mull

Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.
Reinhold Niebuhr

The family unit plays a critical role in our society and in the training of the generation to come.
Sandra Day O’Connor

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.
George Eliot

There is an interconnectedness among members that bonds the family, much like mountain climbers who rope themselves together when climbing a mountain, so that if someone should slip or need support, he’s held up by the others until he regains his footing.
Phil Mcgraw

Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.
André Maurois

Under any system of society … the family holds the future in its bosom.
Charles Franklin Thwing

For the Kennedys, politics was a family tradition; for the Holy Family, killing them was a tradition as well.
Carl William Brown

Woman is the salvation or destruction of the family. She carries its destinies in the folds of her mantle.
Henri-Frederic Amiel

Marriage is to family what legs are to a table.
Betty Jane Wylie

I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
William Butler Yeats

I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
Oscar Wilde

The difference between us is that my family begins with me, whereas yours ends with you.
Author Unknown

We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly.
Mark Twain

A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle.
The Holy Bible

A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.
Charles Swindoll

Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described – and will be, after our deaths – by each of the family members who believe they know us.
Gloria Steinem

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.
George Bernard Shaw

The voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven’s lieutenants.
William Shakespeare

For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.
Christina Rossetti

The dynamics and structures found in those groups called families in our society may not be evident in those groups called families in other places and times.
Ronald David Laing

The trouble with the family is that children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of parenthood.
Evan Esar

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty.
Ann Oakley

It seems to be almost inevitable that the man who accepts a subordinate economic position in the Family degenerates into a loafer and a tyrant.
Helen Dendy Bosanquet

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
John Paul Ii

The family that stays together probably has only one car.
Knofel Staton

The family and the couple are by far the most disintegrating centers of false moral, intellectual, and spiritual well-being in capitalist society.
Carl William Brown

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
Bernard Shaw

Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.
Stella Benson

Never did I think that I became family entertainment.
Jimmy Buffet

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.
Confucius

Roots is not just a saga of my family. It is the symbolic saga of a people.
Alex Haley

Growing up human is uniquely a matter of social relations rather than biology. What we learn from connections within the family takes the place of instincts that program the behavior of animals; which raises the question, how good are these connections?
Elizabeth Janeway

The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.
Paul Johnson

A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of impertinent correspondence, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity. He is known by his knock.
Charles Lamb

Women know what men have long forgotten. The ultimate economic and spiritual unit of any civilization is still the family.
Clare Boothe Luce

A man ought to live so that everybody knows he is a Christian… and most of all, his family ought to know.
Dwight L. Moody

A brother is a friend provided by nature.
Legouve Pere

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Eleanor Roosevelt

You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren’t dying. They’re merging into big conglomerates.
Erma Bombeck

A family is a unit composed not only of children, but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.
Ogden Nash

Woman is the highest, holiest, most precious gift to man. Her mission and throne is the family, and if anything is withheld that would make her more efficient, useful, or happy in that sphere, she is wronged, and has not her rights.
John Todd

He that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home and broods a nest of sorrows.
Jeremy Taylor

The striking point about our model family is not simply the compete-compete, consume-consume style of life it urges us to follow…. The striking point, in the face of all the propaganda, is how few Americans actually live this way.
Louise Kapp Howe

Marriage is the agreement to let a family happen.
Betty Jane Wylie

Raising a family wasn’t something I put on my resumé, but I have to ask myself, would I apply for the same job again?
Erma Bombeck

In one family, every little plan or question is discussed amid bickering and irritation. In another, without the least effort, every discussion goes on amid perfect peace. This is just as easy, and infinitely more agreeable: only, in many homes it does not happen to be the family habit.
Charles Buxton

The most socially subversisve institution of our time is the one-parent family.
Paul Johnson

Children keep a family together, especially when one can’t get a babysitter.
Frederick Shepperd

Women’s liberationists spread the word that the only peaceful family is one in which either the wife is enslaved or the husband is androgynous.
Emmett R. Tyell

My family begins with me, your family ends with you.
Author Unknown

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.
Charles Wadworth

People who have good relationships at home are more effective in the marketplace.
Zig Ziglar

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
G. K. Chesterton

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Francis Bacon

A large family party is rather too much like a flight of tomtits; everlasting twitter, but no conversation; gregariousness without companionship.
Charles Buxton

I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
Oscar Wilde

The family spirit has rendered man carnivorous.
Francis Picabia

As a single dried tree, if fired, sets a whole forest on fire, so does a bad son destroy a whole family.
Chanakya

Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.
Stella Benson

I dedicate this aphorism to my relatives, just to let the world know that I had some.
Carl William Brown

Break up the institution of the family, deny the inviolability of its relations, and in a little while there would not be any humanity.
E. H. Chapin

The family is an absolute monarchy in miniature.
Abraham Miller

In the family, happiness is in the ratio in which each is serving the others, seeking one another’s good, and bearing one another’s burdens.
Henry Ward Beecher

Two people who know they do not understand each other, Breeding children whom they do not understand And who will never understand them.
T. S. Eliot

The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society’s most basic values.
Charles Caleb Colton

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.
Benjamin Franklin

Where can a person be better than in the bosom of their family.
Marmontel Gretry

The many books I have at home, among other things, serve both to keep relatives away and to keep me away from them.
Carl William Brown

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.
Jane Howard

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
Thomas Jefferson

If the family goes, so goes our civilization.
Ronald Reagan

I’m from such an old family, it’s been condemned.
Phyllis Diller

God, I hate my family, these people I never chose to love, but love all the same.
Anne Enright

In houses where, in place of that sacred, inmost flame of love, there is discord at the centre, the whole household becomes hypocritical.
William Makepeace Thackeray

That was what you did with family when you’d been worried about them, you grabbed them and held on to them and told them how much they’d pissed you off, and it was okay, because no matter how angry you got, they still belonged to you.
Cassandra Clare

The family was an art … and the dinner table was the place it found expression.
Don Delillo

I can’t wait to give my writing to my relatives; perhaps it will finally be a good opportunity for them to read a book.
Carl William Brown

When a man is in love with one woman in a family, it is astonishing how fond he becomes of every person connected with it.
William Makepeace Thackeray

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire, to our sons, ambition. But, to our daughters, there is something which there are no words to express.
Joseph Addison

Families, doing everything for each other out of imagined obligation and always getting in each other’s way, what a tangle.
John Updike

A family needs to work as a team, supporting each other’s individual aims and aspirations.
Buzz Aldrin

The government is becoming the family of last resort.
Jerry Brown

Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static, or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else.
Sarah Dessen

Go to friends for advice, woman for love, strangers for charity and relatives for nothing.
Spanish Proverb

What family has no mariner in its tree? No fool, no felon. No fisherman.
Cormac Mccarthy

In that family where the husband is pleased with his wife, and the wife with her husband, happiness will assuredly be lasting.
Brahma

An advantage of poverty, your relatives gain nothing by your death.
Hebrew Proverb

Friends are “annuals” that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a “perennial” that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There’s a place in the garden for both of them.
Erma Bombeck

Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.
Andre Gide

What is family? They were the people who claimed you.
Sarah Dessen

The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended — and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.
Robert Frost

The rich never have to seek out their relatives.
Italian Proverb

None but a mule denies his family.
Arabian Proverb

All people are your relatives, therefore expect only trouble from them.
Chinese Proverb

Govern a family as you would cook a small fish – very gently.
Chinese Proverb

In a broken nest there are few whole eggs.
Chinese Proverb

Man is the head of the family, woman the neck that turns the head.
Chinese Proverb

A small family is soon provided for.
English Proverb

A good son-in-law is like the acquisition of a new son; a bad one is like the loss of your daughter.
Jewish Proverb

Look for the good, not the evil, in the conduct of members of the family.
Jewish Proverb

One of life’s greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn’t good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world.
Jewish Proverb

When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.
Jewish Proverb

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The post Great quotes on family and relatives first appeared on The World of English.

Christmas food

Carl William Brown — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 09:15:38 +0000

Christmas food traditions

Christmas food, an article about traditional food and dishes to create the real atmosphere of a magic Christmas time, with some quotes and historical information.

I am going to church, Watson. I believe such attendance was a prominent element of the Christmas season before the giving of gifts and the consumption of certain fowl became de rigueur?
Sherlock Holmes

If I could work my will every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!
Ebenezer Scrooge

People are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and the New Year, but they really should be worried about what they eat between the New Year and Christmas.
Anonymous

On a silver dish the Christmas pudding reposed in its glory. A large football of a pudding, a piece of holly stuck in it like a triumphant flag and glorious flames of blue and red rising round it. There was a cheer and cries of ‘Ooh-ah.’
Agatha Christie

Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer conglomerates. Who’d have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously? It’s a beautiful world all right.
Bill Watterson

Christmas dinner… was a feast indeed. Oyster soup had been consumed, two enormous turkeys had come and gone, mere carcasses of their former selves. Now, the supreme moment, the Christmas pudding was brought in, in state!’
Agatha Christie

Christmas pudding

Oh! All that steam! The pudding had just been taken out of the cauldron. Oh! That smell! The same as the one which prevailed on washing day! It is that of the cloth which wraps the pudding. Now, one would imagine oneself in a restaurant and in a confectioner’s at the same time, with a laundry nest door. Thirty seconds later, Mrs. Cratchit entered, her face crimson, but smiling proudly, with the pudding resembling a cannon ball, all speckled, very firm, sprinkled with brandy in flames, and decorated with a sprig of holly stuck in the centre. Oh! The marvelous pudding!
Charles Dickens

For many of the islanders, this anniversary is memorable (apart from all religious significance) because it evokes a great slaughter of turkeys, geese and all kinds of game, a wholesale massacre of fat oxen, pigs and sheep; they envisage garlands of black puddings, sausages and saveloys … mountains of plum-puddings and oven-fulls of mince-pies … On that day no one in England may go hungry… This is a family gathering, and on every table the same menu is prepared. A joint of beef, a turkey or goose, which is usually the pièce de résistance, accompanied by a ham, sausages and game; then follow the inevitable plum-pudding and the famous mince pies.
Alfred Suzanne

In Great Britain today, Christmas is a time for families coming together and with the recently acquired wealth, this event is a great excuse for a boom in buying expensive consumer goods especially for children who normally are at the centre of most of the festivities. We are very much in the mainstream of Western European customs, taking the Christmas Tree from Germany, the turkey and plum pudding from England – although there was a tradition, especially in rural areas, to have a goose, rather than a turkey.

Christmas roasted turkey

Holly and mistletoe were the decorations at this time of year and thought to have magical properties. The Druidic ceremonies invariably involved mistletoe and was noted by Roman writers. In some areas, Wales for example, on Christmas morning a special service was held in Churches as early as 3.a.m called the Plygain when particular carols would be sung in three or four part harmony – a custom which is still practised somewhere.

Christmas time is a traditional moment, so nothing better than preparing only classic dishes on Christmas Day. So, for Christmas morning you can start the day with Bloody Mary, scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, because it’s better to keep things light before the onslaught of roast dinner with all the trimmings. As starters you can prepare some chicken liver, some prawn cocktails lettuce cups and smoked salmon salads. Anyway on this occasion food is certainly the pivotal part of the day.

A classic Christmas dinner is the main Christmas meal and is traditionally eaten at mid-day or early afternoon on Christmas Day in England and also in the rest of Britain. After the parcels are opened and after the Queen’s speech at 3pm, the high point of the celebrations can start, a time to gather family or friends together and enjoy the best of British produce. Little has changed over centuries, and the whole dinner is steeped in heritage and tradition. The British sit around wearing paper hats from Christmas Crackers with their silly jokes, and tacky gifts and many still stop to listen to the Queen, and no Christmas is complete without a tray of dates, bowls of nuts and oranges – the first two are rarely eaten but are part of the traditions anyway.

A traditional English and British Christmas dinner includes roast turkey that is a typical Christmas meal, the most common meat, but other birds such as chicken or goose are alternatives; rich nutty stuffing, roast potatoes, brussels sprouts or other vegetables, tiny sausages wrapped in bacon (pigs in a blanket) and lashings of hot gravy to eat with the meat. In Britain, a traditional Christmas cake is a rich fruit cake topped with mazipan and covered with white icing sugar. This is eaten at tea-time (in the late afternoon) on any day shortly before or after Christmas. A Christmas pudding is a traditional pudding. Brandy is sometimes pourred on top and set alight. Rum butter (or rum sauce) and ice cream may be served with the pudding. A common alternative pudding is trifle.

The Christmas Pudding is the traditional sweet eaten in England on the 25th of December. Every family has its own recipe that has belonged to someone who was famous in the family for his/her delicious pudding. There are many curiosities linked to the preparation of this dish: it is good luck to be asked to stir a pudding when it’s being made; it is a custom to add silver coins, or wedding rings, or little silver tokens shaped into buttons to the mixture; it has to be served steaming hot and ablaze, no matter what the climate of the country is; pouring a spirit or brandy over the pudding is a ritual from the past, and it refers to the tradition of the fire worship of the British ancestors.

Christmas special roasted turkey

Christmas pudding is a type of pudding traditionally served as part of the Christmas dinner in the UK, Ireland and in other countries where it has been brought by British emigrants. It has its origins in medieval England, and is sometimes known as plum pudding or just “pud”, though this can also refer to other kinds of boiled pudding involving dried fruit. Despite the name “plum pudding,” the pudding contains no actual plums due to the pre-Victorian use of the word “plums” as a term for raisins.

The pudding is composed of many dried fruits held together by egg and suet, sometimes moistened by treacle or molasses and flavoured with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and other spices. The pudding is usually aged for a month or more, or even a year; the high alcohol content of the pudding prevents it from spoiling during this time. Brandy is often poured over the pudding, which is then set a light as it is carried to the table. The lights are turned off so people can see the flames. Christmas Pudding is served with custard or brandy sauce.

The Christmas pudding known today began life as Christmas porridge called Frumenty, a dish made of wheat or corn boiled up in milk. As time went on, other ingredients, such as dried plums or prunes, eggs, and lumps of meat were added to make it more interesting. When cooked, it was poured into a dish. This pudding was called Plum Pudding. The name ‘Plum Pudding’ continued to be used even when people used raisins, currants, and sultanas instead of prunes.

A proper Christmas pudding is always stirred from East to West in honour of the three Wise Men and traditionally made with 13 ingredients to represent Christ and His Disciples. Every member of the family must give the pudding a stir and make a secret wish. In recent times, however, two-thirds of British children surveyed, revealed that they had never experienced stirring Christmas pudding mix. It comes with their parents’ preference for ready made-mix of puddings available in grocery stores.

Christmas pudding tradition

Here is the legend of this delicious dish. The king was going through a thick forest with his page, when the night came the two men got lost and stumbled upon a woodsman’s hut. The man welcomed them and offered to share his humble porridge. The king ordered his page to add to the pot whatever was left in his saddlebags, because he, too, wanted to share his food, with the poor man. The page obeyed his king and poured some prunes, six eggs, bread crusts, a sprinkling of spice, slices of apples and a generous amount of brandy into the mixture.

It was then stirred and served in wooden bowls. Believe it or not, this is how the Christmas Pudding was invented. In the end the king slipped a gold coin under the woodman’s slice to thank him for his warm hospitality. That’s why for a long time it’s been common practice to include silver Christmas pudding coins, charms or tokens into Christmas pudding. Finding a Christmas coin in your slice of pudding is believed to bring good luck and especially wealth in the coming year.

Stir-up Sunday is an informal term in Anglican churches for the last Sunday before the season of Advent (4-5 weeks before Christmas). It gets its name from the beginning of the collect for the day in the Book of Common Prayer, which begins with the words, “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people”. But it has become associated with the custom of making the Christmas puddings on that day.

The Christmas pudding is one of the essential British Christmas traditions and is said to have been introduced to Britain by Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria (the reality is that the meat-less version was introduced from Germany by George I in 1714). Most recipes for Christmas pudding require it to be cooked well in advance of Christmas and then reheated on Christmas day, so the collect of the day served as a useful reminder.

The Christmas pudding remind us in some ways of the Italian panettone (literally meaning “big loaf”) which is a tall, dome-shaped cake risen with yeast. It has a somewhat light and airy texture but a rich and buttery taste, and it’s not very sweet. It’s a typical Christmas-time cake all around Italy and in Italian communities around the world, but it originates in the northern Italian town of Milan. It traditionally contains raisins and candied fruit (orange and citron zest) and is topped with crisp pearl sugar. More modern versions might substitute the candied fruit with chocolate chips. Most Italians do not make panettone at home, for the simple reason that it is a rather lengthy and complicated process, requiring multiple risings. Usually, it is bought from a local baker or in a supermarket.

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