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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

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Entertainment

Great quotes on family and relatives

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

Thoughts and reflections on family and relatives

Carl William Brown — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 13:14:53 +0000

Thoughts and reflections on family and relatives

Thoughts and reflections on family and relatives by various authors from different eras to understand and meditate on the fundamental cell of our societies.

The family is both the fundamental unit of society as well as the root of culture. It … is a perpetual source of encouragement, advocacy, assurance, and emotional refueling that empowers a child to venture with confidence into the greater world and to become all that he can be.
Marianne E. Neifert

If I had been born into a very wealthy family, I would have written long novels, but accustomed to having to economize, I have developed a certain mastery of simple, short writing, so I can leave the ramblings and elaborate nonsense to those better than me.
Carl William Brown

Of all our social institutions, the family is perhaps the one with which we are most familiar. As we proceed through our lives, our experiences within the family give rise to some of our strongest and most intense feelings. Within the family context lies a paradox, however: although most of us hope for love and support within the family — a haven in a heartless world, so to speak — the family can also be a place of violence and abuse.
Marilyn Poole

What until now has been considered a “normal” family, made up of a father, a mother, and a number of children, has in recent years increasingly begun to be viewed as one among several options, which can no longer claim to be the only or even superior form of ordering human relationships. The Judeo-Christian view of marriage and the family with its roots in the Hebrew Scriptures has to a significant extent been replaced with a set of values that prizes human rights, self-fulfillment, and pragmatic utility on an individual and social level. It can rightly be said that marriage and the family are insitutions under siege in our world today, and that with marriage and the family, our very civilization is in crisis.
Andreas J. Kostenberger

In truth a family is what you make it. It is made strong, not by number of heads counted at the dinner table, but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you share, by the commitment of time, caring, and love you show to one another, and by the hopes for the future you have as individuals and as a unit.
Marge Kennedy

Every family has a story that it tells itself, that it passes on to the children and grandchildren. The story grows over the years, mutates, some parts are sharpened, others dropped, and there is often debate about what really happened. But even with these different sides of the same story, there is still agreement that this is the family story. And in the absence of other narratives, it becomes the flagpole that the family hangs its identity from.
A.M. Homes

If the only alternatives for our young people are the stadium, discos, TV, church, video games, social media, family, school, and the painful world of work, then perhaps we can better understand why some of them feel the desire to escape, even at the cost of ruining their lives forever.
Carl William Brown

Focus on your marriage. Because that’s the nucleus of the home, whatever you do to restore its health and strength will naturally restore what’s broken among the other relationships. If you have no children yet, this will make a comfortable nest for them to begin life well. If you have children, the changes you make in your marriage will affect the rest of the household more quickly and dramatically than you think.
Charles R. Swindoll

The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.
Erma Bombeck

The family is an early expedient and in many ways irrational. If the race had developed a special sexless class to be nurses, pedagogues, and slaves, like the workers among ants and bees, then the family would have been unnecessary. Such a division of labor would doubtless have involved evils of its own, but it would have obviated some drags and vexations proper to the family.
George Santayana

Marx was convinced that in the final phase of the bourgeoisie, the growing mass proletarianization would destroy the family, but he couldn’t say exactly what would replace it. These days, it’s easier to formulate hypotheses on this subject, and we suggest one: prostitutes.
Carl William Brown

All my family, my blood, is mixed up now. They don’t even all know each other. I just hope they don’t never hate or fight each other, not knowin who they are. Cause all these people livin are brothers and sisters and cousins. All these beautiful different colors! We!… We the human Family. God says so! FAMILY!
J. California Cooper

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

A farmer who had a quarrelsome family called his sons and told them to lay a bunch of sticks before him. Then, after laying the sticks parallel to one another and binding them, he challenged his sons, one after one, to pick up the bundle and break it. They all tried, but in vain. Then, untying the bundle, he gave them the sticks to break one by one. This they did with the greatest ease. Then said the father, “Thus, my sons, as long as you remain united, you are a match for anything, but differ and separate, and you are undone.”
Aesop

Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others. As long as its spell lasts, the only in-between which can insert itself between two lovers is the child, love’s own product. The child, this in-between to which the lovers now are related and which they hold in common, is representative of the world in that it also separates them; it is an indication that they will insert a new world into the existing world. Through the child, it is as though the lovers return to the world from which their love had expelled them. But this new worldliness, the possible result and the only possibly happy ending of a love affair, is, in a sense, the end of love, which must either overcome the partners anew or be transformed into another mode of belonging together.
Hannah Arendt

A young Italian girl, even a good-looking one, would rather be slaughtered by two Nigerians than be with her family, at school, at the oratory, at church, at work, in the community – well, that says a lot about the rotten state of our society!
Carl William Brown

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 only perfect love to be found on earth is not sexual love, which is riddled with hostility and insecurity, but the wordless commitment of families, which takes as its model mother-love. This is not to say that fathers have no place, for father-love, with its driving for self-improvement and discipline, is also essential to survival, but that uncorrected father-love, father-love as it were practiced by both parents, is a way to annihilation.
Germaine Greer

The proliferation of support groups suggests to me that too many Americans are growing up in homes that do not contain a grandmother. A home without a grandmother is like an egg without salt and Helpists know it. They have jumped into the void left by the disappearance of morbid old ladies from the bosom of the American family.
Florence E. King

As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals — or, indeed, why it should be an ideal at all. A group of closely related persons living under one roof; it is a convenience, often a necessity, sometimes a pleasure, sometimes the reverse; but who first exalted it as admirable, an almost religious ideal?
Rose Macaulay

With a new familiarity and a flesh-creeping “homeliness” entirely of this unreal, materialistic world, where all “sentiment” is coarsely manufactured and advertised in colossal sickly captions, disguised for the sweet tooth of a monstrous baby called “the Public,” the family as it is, broken up on all hands by the agency of feminist and economic propaganda, reconstitutes itself in the image of the state.
Wyndham Lewis

By profession, I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder – infinitely prouder – to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation and life. While the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still. It is my hope that my son, when I am gone, will remember me not from the battlefield but in the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, “Our Father Who Art in Heaven.”
Douglas Macarthur

The Family is the Country of the heart. There is an angel in the Family who, by the mysterious influence of grace, of sweetness, and of love, renders the fulfillment of duties less wearisome, sorrows less bitter. The only pure joys unmixed with sadness which it is given to man to taste upon earth are, thanks to this angel, the joys of the Family.
Giuseppe Mazzini

But if we live in a global world, in a planetary village, and if we’ve all long been brothers and sisters and ours is one big family, then why are there still borders and illegal immigrants?
Carl William Brown

One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fiber of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardily.
Jonathan Raban

Who knows why Italy, the cradle and homeland of the Vatican, Catholicism, the Holy Family, and the Pope’s sermons on the mystical value of procreation, has long had a zero fertility rate?
Carl William Brown

In one family, all goes by two and two. If a member of it has any interest, he or she will confide it to some one other; but the rest know nothing. In another family, all feel what touches one; nothing is kept dark from the father and mother, brothers and sisters–all share. This family habit is by far the better, it strengthens the tie between the members, and makes the home one home.
Charles Buxton

There is one class of men who from time to time have taken a keen and practical interest in the constitution of the Family, and they are the Statesmen. They have realized how intimately the welfare of the State depends upon the influence and nature of the Families from which it is constituted; and they have endeavoured that the State in turn should mould and influence the Family to its own purposes.
Helen Dendy Bosanquet

The whore is nothing more than a sordid image of a society that exploits parents and sells its sons to its daughters. A sublime embodiment of poverty, incompetence, and stupidity, she is one of those professionals who, despite not knowing how to do anything, earn a lot. This figure is the symbol of the incestuous ignorance of a world that rapes its victims, charging them handsomely, and despises them with respectability, at least until they too begin to reek of that excremental well-being, which is the most fetishistic characteristic of an increasingly masochistic reality. Mediocre beings who, as Shakespeare said, know how to deceive many men only to end up miserably thanks to the self-interested attentions of a single petty individual.
Carl William Brown

In retrospect, it was only a matter of time before the Family Dinner passed into history and fast foods took over. I knew its days were numbered the day our youngest propped my mouth open with a fork and yelled into it, “I want a cheeseburger and two fries and get it right this time.” I just didn’t serve meals with show business pizzazz.
Erma Bombeck

Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others. As long as its spell lasts, the only in-between which can insert itself between two lovers is the child, love’s own product. The child, this in-between, to which the lovers now are related and which they hold in common, is representative of the world in that it also separates them; it is an indication that they will insert a new world into the existing world. Through the child, it is as though the lovers return to the world from which their love had expelled them. But this new worldliness, the possible result and the only possibly happy ending of a love affair, is, in a sense, the end of love, which must either overcome the partners anew or be transformed into another mode of belonging together.
Hannah Arendt

Forms of family life vary from one society to another. There are no universal rules about who is considered to be “in” a family, who lives with whom, who is socially allowed to have sex with whom, who shares economic resources and who has responsibility for children.
Marilyn Poole

Imitation both unconscious and conscious is par excellence the educational method of the family. It is plain that a considerable part of the adaptation of living beings to their environment, i.e., of beings that are born plastic, is passed on from generation to generation through imitation. Were this not so, much if not all of the road traversed by one generation would have to be travelled by the next generation from the very beginning and without short-cuts. Consequently there would be little chance for the novel adaptation, the propitious individual variation, that constitutes progress.
Elsie Worthington Clews Parsons

Rampant nostalgia for the modern family system, or more precisely, for an idealized version of a 1950s Ozzie and Harriet image of the family, has become an increasingly potent ideological force in the United States, with milder versions evident in Canada and England. Fundamentalist Christians and right-wing Republicans spearheaded the profamily movement that abetted the Reagan “revolution” of the 1980s. By the 1994 electoral season, however, even President Clinton had embraced the ideology of an explicitly centrist campaign for family values led by a small group of social scientists. This ongoing campaign portrays family breakdown as the primary source of social malaise in the United States, blaming the decline of the married-couple family for everything from crime, violence, and declining educational standards to poverty, drug abuse, and sexually transmitted disease.
Judith Stacey

Whoever is acquainted with the cruel injustice and unjust subordination frequently manifested in the family, whoever sees matters of lasting and supreme importance relative to the beginning and continuance of the family determined by momentary fancy or unreasoning passion, cannot but desire the construction of a social fabric in which reason may rule with perfect justice.
Charles Franklin Thwing

There are certain functions that the family performs. In the first place the family provides society with an orderly means of reproduction, while at the same time the norms of marriage control the potentially disruptive forces of sexuality. Second, the family provides physical and economic support for the child during the early years of dependence. The child receives its primary socialization in the family, learning the essential ideas and values required for adult life.
Adrian Wilson

Thus in modern times the family drifted on to the high seas, and the world of metaphor such a voyage suggests started to fix itself in the vocabulary of social analysis. Had the winds always blown so strongly as now? people would ask. Had the currents always been so powerful, the family so little able to navigate a separate course?
Edward Shorter

The great want in family life that strikes me is this, that there are so few tête-à-têtes. You live on from year’s end to year’s end, surrounded by those whom you love, and chatting together; but it is rare to be thrown alone with any one individual, and have really intimate talk with him or her. Yet the difference in value is immense between mere social chat, and that mingling of mind with mind, which is impossible if others are by. But the real fact is, that unless some effort is made for it, or unless circumstances are unusually favourable, the very members of the same family live, one might say, on parallel lines, without ever touching.
Charles Buxton

The number one need in all people is the need for acceptance, the need to experience a sense of belonging to something and someone. The need for acceptance is more powerful in your family than anywhere else…. If that need is not met by your family, trust me, your kids will go elsewhere to seek it in order to find approval and acceptance.
Phil Mcgraw

One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fibre of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardy.
Jonathan Raban

Every family had its own peculiar cult, to which no stranger was ever admitted, and which alone could appease and satisfy the gods of that family. The cult was handed down from father to son, from generation to generation, and could not be lost without condemning the whole series of ancestors to eternal misery.
Helen Dendy Bosanquet

The family indeed is dead, if what we mean by it is the modern family system in which units comprised of male breadwinner and female homemaker, married couples, and their offspring dominate the land. But its ghost, the ideology of the family, survives to haunt the consciousness of all those who refuse to confront it. It is time to perform a social autopsy on the corpse of the modern family system so that we may try to lay its troublesome spirit to rest.
Judith Stacey

Of all our social institutions, the family is perhaps the one with which we are most familiar. As we proceed through our lives, our experiences within the family give rise to some of our strongest and most intense feelings. Within the family context lies a paradox, however: although most of us hope for love and support within the family – a haven in a heartless world, so to speak–the family can also be a place of violence and abuse.
Marilyn Poole

Governments and politicians use the family as an indicator of the health and strength of social life. Politicians fear that any weakening of family life will in some way sap the vitality of national life…. The family is also important to businessmen. It is one of the major purchasing groups of our consumer society.
Adrian Wilson

As to the family, I have never understood how that fits in with the other ideals–or indeed, why it should be an ideal at all. A group of closely related persons living under one roof; it is a convenience, often a necessity, sometimes a pleasure, sometimes the reverse; but who first exalted it as admirable, an almost religious ideal?
Rose Macaulay

If we could know as intimately as we know our more immediate parents the long line of ancestors through whom the family spirit has passed on its way to us, we should probably become fatalists in face of the apparently overwhelming evidence that there is nothing in us that has not come to us from, or at least through, the Family. Family portrait galleries are a striking confirmation of the persistence of characteristics which ultimately govern the fortunes of successive generations.
Helen Dendy Bosanquet

I wanted to go to a place where you were important and people listened to what you had to say. Mothering hadn’t done that … and yet … wouldn’t it be ironic if my turf yielded the most important commodity being grown today? A family? A crop of children, seeded by two people, nourished by love, watered by tears, and in eighteen or twenty years harvested into worthwhile human beings to go through the process again.
Erma Bombeck

We all hold on to some image of the family we want, based one way or another on the family we had. Lots of people are thrilled about the families they came from, others couldn’t get away fast enough. Most people fall into that vast middle ground: great affection mixed with a few ideas for improvement. A couple of things they wish could have perhaps been done differently.
Paul Reiser

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The post Thoughts and reflections on family and relatives first appeared on The World of English.

Christmas best humorous quotes

Carl William Brown — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 18:38:38 +0000

Christmas best humorous quotes

Christmas best humorous quotes, a collection of famous amusing aphorisms and funny quotes about Christmas for your holy laughter to spend a wonderful Christmas.

As our dear old friend Mark Twain used to say, mankind has only one truly effective weapon: laughter. So, in this Christmas season, when age is advancing, money is scarce, and the death toll continues to rise, I’ve decided to publish a new selection of humorous aphorisms and funny jokes about Christmas. While I’m fully aware that laughing during this time can be a challenging thing, I still want to have faith and be optimistic. After all, the three things that help us endure adversity, as old Kant reminds us, are precisely: hope, sleep, and laughter. And that’s precisely why I want to bring a breath of joy and lightheartedness to all who will read these funny Christmas quotes that are surely going to bring good tidings to you and your kin and help you get into the holiday spirit.
Carl William Brown

At Christmas, we must all be kinder, not more stupid!
Carl William Brown

Everyone’s nicer at Christmas. It’s the before and after that worries me.
Lucy van Pelt

After the Christmas holidays, my wife always puts me on a diet, but this year I don’t feel like it, and in protest, I’ve started a hunger strike!
Bilbo Baggins

It’s Christmas. I’m torn between feeling a great sense of brotherhood and going skiing in Cortina.
Altan

No one respects me. For Christmas, I gave my son a BB gun. And he gave me a T-shirt with a target on the back.
Rodney Dangerfield

You did it for me! So thank you. That means I’ll put your lover on my Christmas list, but only if I can find a letter bomb.
Woody Allen

During the Christmas holidays my parents always took me to my grandparents, but I didn’t enjoy the cemetery at all.
Carl William Brown

Okay, Christmas is an intimate holiday… but stop giving me underwear!
Boris Dress

According to a recent statistic, the most read phrase during the Christmas holidays is: “Batteries not included.”
Mauroemme

The last time I felt the Christmas spirit, the Ghostbusters were taking care of it.
Waxen

Mom, mom, why are we putting up a Christmas tree in October? How can I tell you you have cancer!
Anonymous

My father was a real bastard. At Christmas, he’d take us into the woods and say, ‘Children, the presents are under the tree. Guess which one?’
Mario Zucca

From a commercial standpoint, if Christmas didn’t exist, it would have to be invented.
Katherine Whitehorn

Christmas: A special day dedicated to the exchange of gifts, gluttony, drunkenness, the most sentimentality, general boredom, and domestic virtues.
Ambrose Bierce

Dear Baby Jesus, in this pandemic year of 2020, you took away my favorite singer: Juliette Gréco; my favorite actor: Sean Connery; my favorite soccer player: Diego Maradona; my favorite theatrical actor, Gigi Proietti; my favorite philosopher, Giulio Giorello (so to speak, of course). Listen to me now, I wanted to tell you that my favorite politician is … (insert the politician you think deserves to leave us as soon as possible) and that the year isn’t over yet! Best wishes again, and try your best.
Carl William Brown

As a child, it was tough. For Christmas, I was given batteries, with the words “Toy not included” written on them.
Rodney Dangerfield

There’s nothing sadder than waking up on Christmas morning and discovering you’re not a child.
Erma Bombeck

There’s so much crisis during this Christmas pandemic that the markets will surely open with a sharp decline.
Carl William Brown

Have you ever noticed that life seems to follow patterns? For example, I’ve noticed that every year around this time of year I hear Christmas music.
Tom Sims

We’re having a baby soon. Are you kidding? No, I’m actually having a baby: the doctor told me… it’ll be my Christmas present! But a tie was enough for me!
Woody Allen

Some enterprising youth should go from door to door on Christmas morning peddling batteries.
Jean Kerr

The ultimate in longevity is the Christmas fruitcake. It is a cake made during the holidays with fruits that make it heavier than the stove it is cooked in.
Erma Bombeck

What I don’t like about Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day.
Phyllis Diller

The tradition of Festivus begins with the Airing of Grievances. I’ve got a lot of problems with you people! And now, you’re going to hear about it!
Frank Costanza

Best Christmas humor quotes

Rich, peaceful nations sell weapons to poor, war-torn nations; then at Christmas they collect toys to send to the children of families devastated by the planet’s various conflicts.
Carl William Brown

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was 6. Mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph.
Shirley Temple

Turkey is good for Christmas, but Christmas is not good for turkey.
Achille Campanile

Nobody’s walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas.
Clark Griswold

Ugster vinyl pumps, Partridge Family records, plastic daisy jewelry, old postcards … It’s a magpie Christmas market.
Francesca Lia Block

It’s Christmas Eve. This morning in the shop, a woman asked me what time Midnight Mass is…
Sarotta

I would like a nice slice of Christmas Pam. Side of candy Pams. And perhaps some Pam chops with mint.
Michael Scott

Some people are born for Halloween, and some are just counting the days until Christmas.
Stephen Jones

You say you hate Washington’s birthday or Thanksgiving, and nobody cares, but you say you hate Christmas, and people treat you like you’re a leper.
Kate Beringer

My mother-in-law has come round to our house at Christmas seven years running. This year we’re having a change. We’re going to let her in.
Les Dawson

Our children await Christmas presents like politicians getting in election returns: There’s the Uncle Fred precinct and the Aunt Ruth district still to come in.
Marcelene Cox

Christmas, that annual celebration of parental guilt and juvenile greed.
P.D. James

At Christmas, one in three Italians will go into debt for Christmas Eve dinner. The other two will go into debt for dinner.
Don Eugenio Iodice

I got myself for Secret Santa. I was supposed to tell somebody, but I didn’t.
Kevin Malone

Christmas is the season when people run out of money before they run out of friends.
Larry Wilde

I grew up on a Christmas Tree Farm, so this is a good season for me. I was too young to help with the hauling of the trees up the hills and putting them onto cars. So, it was my job to pull the praying mantis pods off of the Christmas trees. The problem with that is if you leave them on there, people bring them into their house. I forgot to check one time, and they hatched all over these people’s house – and there were hundreds of thousands of them!
Taylor Swift

The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.
George Carlin

I was Christmas shopping and ran into a guy on the street. I noticed his watch and said that it runs slow. He said, ‘So does the guy I stole it from.’
David Letterman

I got myself for Secret Santa. I was supposed to tell somebody, but I didn’t.
Kevin Malone

Don’t send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals when their cheery effect is needed.
P.J. O’Rourke

Christmas is a time when you get homesick, even if you’re home.
Carol Nelson

At the Festivus dinner, you gather your family around and tell them all the ways they have disappointed you over the past year.
Frank Costanza

Wife and husband at the table: “Of course, of course, dear, I like Christmas leftovers… but not in April!”
Anonymous

You have such a pretty face. You should be on a Christmas card.
Buddy, Elf

What are you doing for Christmas?” “I’m getting fat.”
Daniele Villa

Aren’t we forgetting the true meaning of Christmas? You know, the birth of Santa.
Bart Simpson

Last Christmas, I was so broke that, to avoid disappointing my son, I had to tell him I’d bought him the Invisible Man doll.
Paolo Burini

No matter how many Christmas presents you give your child, there’s always that terrible moment when he’s opened the very last one. That’s when he expects you to say, ‘Oh yes, I almost forgot,’ and take him out and show him the pony.
Mignon McLaughlin

What about an authentic Pennsylvania Dutch Christmas? Drink some gluhwein, enjoy some hasenpfeffer.
Dwight Schrute

Christmas humor quotes

Christmas is awesome. First of all, you got to spend time with people you love. Secondly, you can get drunk and no one can say anything.
Michael Scott

But what do I care about having a good Christmas? The problem is the other 364 days.
Francesco De Collibus

Christmas, that annual celebration of parental guilt and juvenile greed.
P.D. James

It will be a very traditional Christmas, with presents, crackers, doors slamming and people bursting into tears.
Victoria Wood

Down the chimney? You want me to take the toys down the chimney into a strange house, in my underwear?
Scott Calvin

Let’s be naughty and save Santa the trip.
Gary Allan

It’s always consoling to know that today’s Christmas gifts are tomorrow’s garage sales.
Milton Berle

Rome, the Baby Jesus was stolen from the nativity scene in the Imperial Forums. Word has spread that his father is very high up.
Lia Celi

If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, it would be Christmas every day.
John Boehner

It’s easier to feel a little more spiritual with a couple of bucks in your pocket.
Craig Ferguson

There are three stages of man: he believes in Santa Claus; he does not believe in Santa Claus; he is Santa Claus.
Bob Phillips

You can’t fool me – there ain’t no Sanity Clause!
Chico Marx

Keep your friends close, your enemies closer and receipts for all major purchases.
Bridger Winegar

Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall.
Larry Wilde

A Christmas miracle is when your family doesn’t get into a single argument all day.
Melanie White

The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.
Buddy, Elf

One thing I learned from drinking is that if you ever go Christmas caroling, you should go with a group of people. And also go in mid-December.
Louis C.K.

I left Santa gluten-free cookies and organic soy milk, and he put a solar panel in my stocking.
Earthman Adam

In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it ‘Christmas’ and went to church; the Jews called it ‘Hanukkah’ and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say ‘Merry Christmas!’ or ‘Happy Hanukkah!’ or (to the atheists) ‘Look out for the wall!’
Dave Barry

Christmas: It’s the only religious holiday that’s also a federal holiday. That way, Christians can go to their services, and everyone else can sit at home and reflect on the true meaning of the separation of church and state.
Samantha Bee

Christmas is a baby shower that went totally overboard.
Andy Borowitz

I don’t want Christmas season to end because it’s the only time I can legitimately indulge in one particular addiction: glitter.
Eloisa James

God invites us to humility and simplicity,” said the man who wore golden vestments while officiating Christmas Mass.
Massimo Meoni

Nothing’s as mean as giving a little child something useful for Christmas.
Kin Hubbard

The ideal Christmas gift is money, but the trouble is you can’t charge it.
Bill Vaughan

That’s the true spirit of Christmas; people being helped by people other than me.
Jerry Seinfeld

Once again, we come to the holiday season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.
Dave Barry

Santa Claus wears a red suit. He must be a communist. And long hair. He must be a pacifist. What’s in that pipe he’s smoking?
Arlo Guthrie

I just want to be rich enough to buy enough ornaments to cover more than one side of the tree.
Charlotte Christmas

I once bought my kids a set of batteries for Christmas with a note on it saying, ‘Toys not included.’
Bernard Manning

Today I put up the Christmas tree. With the current crisis, I’m trying to earn some money by dressing up as a Christmas tree.
Massimo Bozza

Christmas is almost here. I’ll try to escape through the window.
Anonymous

Of course, Santa is dead. You force a guy to eat a billion cookies in one night, what do you think is going to happen?
Jimmy Kimmel

This past Christmas, I told my girlfriend for months in advance that all I wanted was an Xbox. That’s it. Beginning and end of list, Xbox. You know what she got me? A homemade frame with a picture of us from our first date together. Which was fine. Because I got her an Xbox. Anthony Jeselnik

This holiday season, no matter what your religion is, please take a moment to reflect on why it’s better than all the other ones.
Guy Endore Kaiser

Christmas humorous aphorisms

Share these funny holiday quotes with your friends and family to spread Christmas joy, or use them as clever Christmas-themed Instagram captions. You can even use them on coffee mugs or T-shirts and give them as gifts!
Keep Watching

Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people only once a year.
Victor Borge

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

Sending Christmas cards is a good way to let your friends and family know that you think they’re worth the price of a stamp.
Melanie White

‘Mistletoe,’ said Luna dreamily, pointing at a large clump of white berries placed almost over Harry’s head. He jumped out from under it. ‘Good thinking,’ said Luna seriously. ‘It’s often infested with nargles.’
J.K. Rowling

More than Santa Claus, your sister knows when you’ve been bad and good.
Linda Sunshine

It’s all fun and games until Santa checks the naughty list.
Unknown

You can just hear Santa saying ‘Ho, Ho, Ho’ when you receive your credit card statement in January.
Kate Summers

Synthetic literature. Today: Christmas theme. Title: “I went with my girlfriend to see a nativity scene.” Development: “Two hearts, a hut.”
Andrea Balestrero

Christmas songs are like sexual intercourse: after the third one, you can’t take it anymore.
Flavio Oreglio

It’s Christmas Eve! It’s the one night of the year when we all act a little nicer, we smile a little easier, we cheer a little more. For a couple of hours out of the whole year, we are the people that we always hoped we would be.
Bill Murray

The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.
Johnny Carson

Christmas: the one time of year when you can’t avoid the nuts in your family muesli.
Charles Stross

So I’ve started wearing sweatpants to bed because I really don’t need Santa seeing me in my underwear.
Jeff Kinney

I hate, loathe and despise Christmas. It’s a time when single people have to take cover or get out of town.
Kristin Hunter

Waiting for a special occasion to kill me? Christmas is coming.
Cassandra Clare

I wish we could put some of our Christmas spirit in jars and open one up every month.
Unknown

There are 17 more shopping days until Christmas. So, guys, that means 16 more days till we start shopping, right?
Conan O’Brien

I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage and tangled Christmas tree lights.
Maya Angelou

Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.
Johnny Carson

My wife, like many women, actually likes wrapping things. If she gives you a gift that requires batteries, she wraps the batteries separately, which to me is very close to being a symptom of mental illness.
Dave Barry

From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.
Katharine Whitehorn

Do you know why so many people love Jesus? Without Jesus, no Christmas.
Melanie White

The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington D.C. This wasn’t for any religious reasons. They couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.
Jay Leno

I never get to see Santa Claus come down the chimney because I always get too tired and fall asleep from eating all his cookies while waiting for him.
Theodore W. Higginsworth

There are a lot of things money can’t buy. Not one of them is on my son’s list.
Milton Berle

Christmas is the season when you buy this year’s gifts with next year’s money.
Unknown

Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.
Stephen Fry

My husband’s idea of getting the Christmas spirit is to become Scrooge.
Melanie White

Even before Christmas has said Hello, it’s saying ‘Buy Buy.’
Robert Paul

I bought my brother some gift wrap for Christmas. I took it to the Gift Wrap department and told them to wrap it, but in a different print so he would know when to stop unwrapping.
Steven Wright

At Christmas, tea is compulsory. Relatives are optional.
Robert Godden

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. But if the white runs out, I’ll drink the red.
Unknown

It was two weeks before Christmas. A slow time of year for raising the dead.
Laurell K. Hamilton

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

One good thing about Christmas shopping is it toughens you for the January sales.
Grace Kriley

People really act weird at Christmas time! What other time of year do you sit in front of a dead tree in the living room and eat nuts and sweets out of your socks?
Unknown

The older I get, the fewer useless gifts I get. The fewer I get, the less I have to wrap to re-gift for next Christmas.
Robert Rivers

The office Christmas party is a great opportunity to catch up with people you haven’t seen for 20 minutes.
Julius Sharpe

Christmas is such a carefree, low-pressure time – that’s one of the things I love about it.
Stephen King

I haven’t taken my Christmas lights down. They look so nice on the pumpkin.
Winston Spear

Christmas is a box of tree ornaments that have become part of the family.
Charles M. Schulz

Nothing says holidays like a cheese log.
Ellen Degeneres

Thank you, Stockings, for being a long flammable piece of fabric people like to hang over a roaring fireplace.
Jimmy Fallon

Once you stop believing in Santa, you get underwear for Christmas.
Unknown

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.
Garrison Keillor

Why is Christmas just like a day at the office? You do all the work, and the fat guy with the suit gets all the credit.
Unknown

Well, they’ll bark you down like carneys, sell you Christmas cards in June.
Tom Waits

Whenever you give someone a present or sing a holiday song, you’re helping Santa Claus. To me, that’s what Christmas is all about. Helping Santa Claus!
Louis Sachar

Our children await Christmas presents like politicians getting in election returns: There’s the Uncle Fred precinct and the Aunt Ruth district still to come in.
Marcelene Cox

Hey, great idea: if you have kids, give your partner reading vouchers next Christmas. Each voucher entitles the bearer to two hours’ reading time *while the kids are awake*. It might look like a cheapskate present, but parents will appreciate that it costs more in real terms than a Lamborghini.
Nick Hornby

Hiv world news

Carl William Brown — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 08:32:34 +0000

World Hiv/Aids numbers

Hiv world news, information, news, quotes and article about HIV and infectious deseases with updated links resources, news feed by 27-7 press release and English-culture.com blog.

https://www.unaids.org/en WAD report 2025 Overcoming disruption, Transforming the AIDS response (Here you can also download a full report)

World AIDS Day, 1 December, serves as an important reminder that we must remain steadfast in our commitment to prevent new HIV infections and provide essential services to all people living with HIV globally. In 2024, we will commemorate the 37th World AIDS Day with the theme, “Collective Action: Sustain and Accelerate HIV Progress.” To read more about this year’s theme please visit the HIV.gov blog.

HIV. Short for human immunodeficiency virus. Any of various strains of a retrovirus of the genus Lentivirus that cause AIDS by infecting the body’s immune system.

Human immunodeficiency virus infection/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a disease of the human immune system caused by infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). During the initial infection, a person may experience a brief period of influenza-like illness. This is typically followed by a prolonged period without symptoms. As the illness progresses, it interferes more and more with the immune system, making the person much more likely to get infections, including opportunistic infections and tumors that do not usually affect people who have working immune systems.

HIV is transmitted primarily via unprotected sexual intercourse (including anal and even oral sex), contaminated blood transfusions, hypodermic needles, and from mother to child during pregnancy, delivery, or breastfeeding. Some bodily fluids, such as saliva and tears, do not transmit HIV. Prevention of HIV infection, primarily through safe sex and needle-exchange programs, is a key strategy to control the spread of the disease. There is no cure or vaccine; however, antiretroviral treatment can slow the course of the disease and may lead to a near-normal life expectancy. While antiretroviral treatment reduces the risk of death and complications from the disease, these medications are expensive and may be associated with side effects.

With around 30 000 newly diagnosed HIV infections reported each year over the last decade, the HIV epidemic remains a significant public health problem in the 31 countries of the European Union and European Economic Area (EU/EEA).

The rate of newly reported cases of HIV increased by 2% each year among older adults since 2004. Based on data reported to ECDC between 2004 and 2015, 312 501 new HIV diagnoses were reported in younger adults (15 to 49 years of age) in the EU/EEA, resulting in an average reported incidence of new diagnoses of 11.4 per 100 000 population.

World Hiv last news and information

During this 12-year period, 54 102 cases were reported among older adults aged over 50 years translating into 2.6 per 100 000 population. The rate of newly reported cases increased by 2% each year among older adults since 2004, when 3 132 diagnoses were notified in this age group. By 2015, around every one in six (17%) of newly diagnosed HIV in Europe were among people aged over 50, accounting for 5076 reported cases.

Young women who live in areas with high maternal mortality change their behavior less in response to HIV than young women who live in areas with low maternal mortality.
Emily Oster

Even though it is the case that poverty is linked to AIDS, in the sense that Africa is poor and they have a lot of AIDS, it’s not necessarily the case that improving poverty – at least in the short run, that improving exports and improving development – it’s not necessarily the case that that’s going to lead to a decline in HIV prevalence.
Emily Oster

They don’t actually see the real world, where 95% of the people with HIV are not treated and are dying. And even though we have some blue sky now in our country, the sky could become cloudy again very soon.
Luc Montagnier

For many people with HIV, finding the right doctor is the most important decision they’ll make.
David Mixner

I have a lot of friends who are infected with HIV, and you wanna protect them… To increase the awareness of it and to find a cure for it, the human lives we would save would be a really awesome thing. You just have to involve yourself as much as you can.
Tara Reid

I had been an activist on the issue of HIV, primarily in the African American and Latino communities here in the U.S. for many years. It was horrifying to me how the pandemic was raging right here in this country but no one was talking about it.
Gloria Reuben

I did this role in Life Goes On as an HIV positive character and so emotionally that was the most challenging.
Chad Lowe

We are working with a biotech company, Calypte, which has designed a urine test for the HIV antibody.
Luc Montagnier

I think we should put the same weight now on the co-factors as we have on HIV.
Luc Montagnier

The number of people with HIV receiving Medicare benefits has grown over time, reflecting growth in the size of the of the HIV positive population in the U.S. but also an increased lifespan for people with HIV due to antiretroviral medicines and other treatment advances.
David Mixner

All of my peers died of AIDS, and I have no one to celebrate my past or my journey, or to help me pass down stories to the next generation. We lost an entire generation of storytellers with HIV.
David Mixner

It’s no fun to have HIV even though it’s viewed as a chronic, controllable disease. It means being wedded to the health system.
Phil Berger

Hiv world situation by Statista

Leaders in all spheres who are living with HIV should be encouraged, not coerced, to lead by example and disclose their HIV status.
Nelson Mandela

HIV does not make people dangerous to know, so you can shake their hands and give them a hug: Heaven knows they need it.
Princess Diana

I can’t understand why the front pages of newspapers can cover bird flu and swine flu and everybody is up in arms about that and we still haven’t really woken up to the fact that so many women in sub-Saharan Africa – 60 percent of people in – infected with HIV are women.
Annie Lennox

People with HIV are still stigmatized. The infection rates are going up. People are dying. The political response is appalling. The sadness of it, the waste.
Elton John

The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.
Jeremiah Wright

The important thing is this Just because I’m doing well doesn’t mean that they’re going to do well if they get HIV. A lot of people have died since I have announced. This disease is not going anywhere.
Magic Johnson

A lot of people in my world – in the acting world – have either lost friends to Aids or live with HIV because its origin in our culture, in New York for instance, was in the gay community.
Emma Thompson

I tell you, it’s funny because the only time I think about HIV is when I have to take my medicine twice a day.
Magic Johnson

The general population still thinks HIV is something that came in the 80s and went away, or that it only affects the gay population or intravenous drug users.
Annie Lennox

People are so involved with immediate care, but at the same time there needs to be investment in educating people as adolescents when they’re still HIV negative.
Charlize Theron

Everyone thought I was going to die like a year later, they didn’t know. So I helped educate sports, and then the world, that a man living with HIV can play basketball. He’s not going to give it to anybody by playing basketball.
Magic Johnson

And the danger is – and it’s happening – is we’re seeing an incredibly big rise amongst young gay people, young heterosexual people as far as catching HIV, which is, you know, in an educated country like this or in Britain, it’s frightening.
Elton John

And there’s no guarantee that if you get HIV and you take these triple therapies, or whatever comes along next, that they’re going to be successful for you.
Elton John

The greatest grand challenge for any scientist is discovering how to prevent the spread of HIV and finding the cure or an effective vaccine for AIDS.
Philip Emeagwali

At the same time, it is obvious that clinicians in Haiti are faced with different, and, in fact, greater, challenges when attempting to treat complications of HIV disease.
Paul Farmer

I recommend the same therapies for all humans with HIV. There is no reason to believe that physiologic responses to therapy will vary across lines of class, culture, race or nationality.
Paul Farmer

In fact, it seems to me that making strategic alliances across national borders in order to treat HIV among the world’s poor is one of the last great hopes of solidarity across a widening divide.
Paul Farmer

One out of every 100 American men is HIV positive. The rate of infection has reached epidemic proportions in 40 developing nations.
Philip Emeagwali

Housing Works is the coolest thrift store in the world, because not only are they the best thrift store – they’re not the most thrifty thrift store – but they have amazing stuff and all of their proceeds go directly to kids, mostly homeless kids, living with AIDS and HIV in New York, in the metropolitan area.
Ezra Miller

I’m part of a team that raises millions of dollars and raises awareness of HIV and AIDS all over the world.
Linda Evangelista

HIV AIDS is a disease with stigma. And we have learned with experience, not just with HIV AIDS but with other diseases, countries for many reasons are sometimes hesitant to admit they have a problem.
Margaret Chan

Being in the design industry, I’ve tended to meet more people who are affected by HIV and AIDS.
Douglas Wilson

HIV infection and AIDS is growing – but so too is public apathy. We have already lost too many friends and colleagues.
David Geffen

I couldn’t care less if the guy I’m guarding has HIV. I’m going to slam him anyway.
Dennis Rodman

Eighty percent of Americans with HIV do not know they are infected.
Philip Emeagwali

When a person tests positive for HIV, it is not a test for the virus itself but for antibodies to the virus, and the test is not able to distinguish between HIV antibodies and a multitude of other antibodies. Many conditions can lead to a false positive result, including flu shots, hepatitis, and pregnancy.
Nate Mendel

Mr. Do-Nothing Obama will say today, ‘Lets think of all the poor dead people’ – or ‘let’s honor all the dead’ instead of fighting for the living. He has been really useless in terms of both HIV and gay issues. He is simply not a leader. He may be president, but he is not a leader.
Larry Kramer

Those who say that climate change doesn’t exist are being understood as the flat-earthers that they are, as the people who deny the link between smoking and cancer, as the people who denied the link between HIV and AIDS.
Nicholas Stern

We see new things all the time. We see new retroviruses out there – which is the category that HIV falls into – and we’re very, very concerned because this is the part of the world where HIV jumped from chimpanzees to humans.
Nathan Wolfe

There exist thousands of Americans who have AIDS-defining diseases but are HIV negative.
Serge Lang

Of course, screening for HIV did essentially eliminate the transmission of this virus by transfusions.
Serge Lang

Overall, I have formed three major organizations: the National Association of Business Women, the Young Women’s Leaders Network, and the Joyce Banda Foundation. Under the foundation, we have a huge program that targets women to teach them about HIV and other diseases and to give them economic empowerment.
Joyce Banda

People wait in line to see me, saying there’s plenty of living to be done even if you have an HIV diagnosis. People say they are 10- or 15-year survivors and still moving forward.
Greg Louganis

I have full confidence in the ability of Foo Fighters’ audiences to distinguish between questioning HIV and the obvious value of safe-sex practices.
Nate Mendel

The challenges surrounding HIV and AIDS are getting more complex and mature, and we just can’t stick our heads in the sand and say ‘it can’t happen to me.’
Brande Roderick

Reiterating the belief that HIV is the cause of AIDS is an easy thing to do. Understanding the science and politics of the situation is much more complicated and requires study with a critical and open mind.
Nate Mendel

How is AIDS research to progress when the premise of science is questioning but the premise of questioning HIV is considered so dangerous that even venturing into the facts is too great a risk?
Nate Mendel

In South Africa, where HIV-positive children are often shunned, we have an HIV-positive Muppet to teach children to be friendly with children with HIV. But they use local actors. And it’s not always a street. Sometimes it’s ‘Sesame Plaza,’ or ‘Sesame Tree.’
Joan Ganz Cooney

Links, news and resources:

https://www.unaids.org/en WAD report 2025 Overcoming disruption, Transforming the AIDS response (Here you can also download a full report)

www.aidsmap.com/news We work to change lives by sharing information about HIV.

medicalxpress.com/hiv-aids-news/ The latest news on HIV, Aids, HIV research, Aids Research, Aids Studies and HIV medicine.

www.sciencedaily.com/news/health_medicine/hiv_and_aids/ HIV and AIDS information and facts. Read latest medical articles and view educational videos on AIDS and HIV symptoms and treatments. Stay informed about new developments on the AIDS/HIV front.

Researchers a step closer to a cure for HIV.
Date: March 26, 2024
Source: University of Western Ontario
Summary: A new study shows virus-like particle can effectively ‘shock and kill’ latent HIV reservoir in those living with chronic HIV.

Bonfire Night Celebrations

The post Hiv world news first appeared on The World of English.

Guy Fawkes Day

Carl William Brown — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 10:33:44 +0000

Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot

Guy Fawkes Day, also known as Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night and Firework Night, is an annual commemoration observed on 5 November, primarily in Great Britain.This article talks about its origin, celebrations, tradition and customs. Guy Fawkes Day is not a public holiday. Businesses have normal opening hours. A firework display to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Bonfire Night.

Its history begins with the events of 5 November 1605, when Guy Fawkes and some friends, a group of provincial English Catholics, tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament with gunpowder and assasinate the Protestant King James I of England and replace him with a Catholic head of state; like many people (in the past as well as now!) they didn’t like the government.

The attempt failed and Guy Fawkes was caught and arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. Celebrating the fact that King James I had survived the attempt on his life, people lit bonfires around London, and months later the introduction of the Observance of 5th November Act enforced an annual public day of thanksgiving for the plot’s failure, in fact the parliament had said that every year on November 5th people should remember the Gunpowder Plot, that is the day when Members of Parliament were saved from a horrible death.

Within a few decades Gunpowder Treason Day, as it was known, became the predominant English state commemoration, but as it carried strong Protestant religious overtones it also became a focus for anti-Catholic sentiment. Puritans delivered sermons regarding the perceived dangers of popery, while during increasingly raucous celebrations common folk burnt effigies of popular hate-figures, such as the pope. Towards the end of the 18th century reports appear of children begging for money with effigies of Guy Fawkes and 5 November gradually became known as Guy Fawkes Day.

Towns such as Lewes and Guildford were in the 19th century scenes of increasingly violent class-based confrontations, fostering traditions those towns celebrate still, albeit peaceably. In the 1850s changing attitudes resulted in the toning down of much of the day’s anti-Catholic rhetoric, and the Observance of 5th November Act was repealed in 1859. Eventually the violence was dealt with, and by the 20th century Guy Fawkes Day had become an enjoyable social commemoration, although lacking much of its original focus. The present-day Guy Fawkes Night is usually celebrated at large organised events, centred on a bonfire and extravagant firework displays.

Settlers exported Guy Fawkes Night to overseas colonies, including some in North America, where it was known as Pope Day. Those festivities died out with the onset of the American Revolution. Claims that Guy Fawkes Night was a Protestant replacement for older customs like Samhain are disputed, although another old celebration, Halloween, has lately increased in popularity, and according to some writers, may threaten the continued observance of 5 November.

The Gunpowder Plot conspirators

Little is known about the earliest celebrations. In settlements such as Carlisle, Norwich and Nottingham, corporations provided music and artillery salutes. Canterbury celebrated 5 November 1607 with 106 pounds of gunpowder and 14 pounds of match, and three years later food and drink was provided for local dignitaries, as well as music, explosions and a parade by the local militia. Even less is known of how the occasion was first commemorated by the general public, although records indicate that in the Protestant stronghold of Dorchester a sermon was read, the church bells rung, and bonfires and fireworks lit.

Organised entertainments also became popular in the late 19th century, and 20th-century pyrotechnic manufacturers renamed Guy Fawkes Day as Firework Night. Sales of fireworks dwindled somewhat during the First World War, but resumed in the following peace. At the start of the Second World War celebrations were again suspended, resuming in November 1945. For many families, Guy Fawkes Night became a domestic celebration, and children often congregated on street corners, or standing outside railway stations accompanied by their own figures effigy of Guy Fawkes made of soks and straw and dressed in old clothes. Collecting money was a popular reason for their creation, the children taking their effigy from door to door, or displaying it on street corners, while saying “Penny for the guy”.

However they were mainly built to go on the bonfire, itself sometimes comprising wood stolen from other pyres; “an acceptable convention” that helped bolster another November tradition, Mischief Night. Rival gangs competed to see who could build the largest, sometimes even burning the wood collected by their opponents; in 1954 the Yorkshire Post reported on fires late in September, a situation that forced the authorities to remove latent piles of wood for safety reasons.

Lately, however, the custom of begging for a “penny for the Guy” has almost completely disappeared. In contrast, some older customs still survive; in Ottery St Mary men chase each other through the streets with lit tar barrels, and since 1679 Lewes has been the setting of some of England’s most extravagant 5 November celebrations, the Lewes Bonfire. Generally, modern 5 November celebrations are run by local charities and other organisations, with paid admission and controlled access, anyway Guy Fawkes’ Day is finally declining, having lost its connection with politics and religion. But we have heard that many times before.

The Fifth of November

Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England’s overthrow.
But, by God’s providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stake
For King James’s sake!
If you won’t give me one,
I’ll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn’orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!

English Folk Verse (c.1870)

Perhaps most widely known in America from its use in the movie V for Vendetta, versions of the above poem have been wide spread in England for centuries. They celebrate the foiling of (Catholic) Guy Fawkes’s attempt to blow up (Protestant controlled) England’s House of Parliament on November 5th, 1605. Known variously as Guy Fawkes Day, Gunpowder Treason Day, and Fireworks Night, the November 5th celebrations in some time periods included the burning of the Pope or Guy Fawkes in effigy. This traditional verse exists in a large number of variations and the above version has been constructed to give a flavor for the major themes that appear in them. Several of the reference books on the subject cite even earlier sources.

Guy Fawkes also inspired the mask that V wears in the movie V for Vendetta, a dystopian political thriller directed by James McTeigue and written by The Wachowski Brothers, based on the 1988 DC/Vertigo Comics that were initially a British graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd published in black and white as an ongoing serial in the short-lived UK anthology Warrior, and only after morphed into a ten-issue limited series published by DC Comics.

In modern society in general, this mask has become a symbol of anarchism, revolution, and civil disobedience, for example, demonstrators in Egypt and at Occupy Wall Street in New York City wore the iconic mask to show their disapproval of the government.

Within the graphic novel, the mask is a powerful symbol: it communicates the wearer’s allegiance to the spirit of Guy Fawkes, the man who tried and failed to blow up the Houses of Parliament in the 16th century and his opposition to the Norsefire government that controls England. One important element of the mask’s power as a symbol is its anonymity: anyone can wear the mask and embody the spirit of rebellion.

We see this first-hand in the graphic novel, as in the final chapters, Evey Hammond dons V’s mask and “becomes” V. In the end, then, the Guy Fawkes mask represents symbols at their most powerful: they can transform individual, flawed people into something more powerful and create movements.

You can also read:

Guy Fawkes Story