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The post War and peace quotes 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

Great quotes 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

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.

The Christmas Tree

Carl William Brown — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 09:14:56 +0000

Christmas tree legends

The Christmas Tree, an article that explains its legend, origin and tradition, with some enlightening merry quotes to enrich the great value of the Christmas period.

Snowflakes felt so awesome in winter season. There is a main figure in Christmas known as Santa Claus. And the main theme of Christmas is jingle bell, a very famous tune known all other the world. People use this tune a lot all over the Christmas event, and it feels so good like something very positive that will bring peace and happiness in our lives.

Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.
T. S. Eliot

It is curious to what a degree one may become attached to a fine tree, especially when it is placed where trees are rare.
Christian Nestell Bovee

The Christmas tree is the dot on the i.
Frank Taylor

The trees that bud and blossom forth, Throughout the world from south to north, Are tokens that a life will bloom When manhood’s passed beyond the tomb.
T. Augustus Forbes Leith

Three things are needed to make a Christmas tree: ornaments, the tree and faith in the future.
Armenian proverb

I stone got crazy when I saw somebody run down them strings with a bottleneck. My eyes lit up like a Christmas tree and I said that I had to learn.
Muddy Waters

My beer-drenched soul is sadder than all the dead Christmas trees in the world.
Charles Bukowski

He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.
Roy L. Smith

It’s not what’s under the Christmas tree that matters, it’s who’s around it.
Charlie Brown

A Christian should resemble a fruit tree with real fruit, not a Christmas tree with decorations tied on.
John Stott

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

Christmas tree origins

I grew up with a Christmas tree, I’m going to stay with a Christmas tree.
Thomas Menino

The perfect Christmas tree, all Christmas trees are perfect.
Charles N. Barnard

Some Christmas tree ornaments do more than glitter and glow, they represent a gift of love given a long time ago.
Tom Baker

The Christmas tree is beautiful only when it is finished and when the lights can be turned on, the crib is not, the crib is beautiful when you do it or even when you think about it.
Luciano De Crescenzo

Taking down the Christmas tree makes it feel official: time to get back to joyless and cynical.
Greg Fitzsimmons

I never thought it was such a bad little tree. It’s not bad at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love.
Linus Van Pelt

What will we find under the Christmas tree this year? Oh my God, I think the roots!
Carl William Brown

Glittering tinsel, lights, glass balls, and candy canes dangle from pine trees.
Richelle E. Goodrich

The best Christmas trees come very close to exceeding nature.
Andy Rooney

There is new life in the soil for every man. There is healing in the trees for tired minds and for our overburdened spirits, there is strength in the hills, if only we will lift up our eyes. Remember that nature is your great restorer.
Calvin Coolidge

The earth reminded us of a Christmas tree ornament hanging in the blackness of space. As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine.
James Irwin

Christmas tree stands are the work of the devil and they want you dead.
Bill Bryson

Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness.
Eckhart Tolle

He that planteth a tree is the servant of God, He provideth a kindness for many generations, And faces that he hath not seen shall bless him.
Henry Van Dyke

Christmas tree quotes

Now I’m an old Christmas tree, the roots of which have died. They just come along and while the little needles fall off me replace them with medallions.
Orson Welles

Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 25 feet tall.
Larry Wilde

They’ve got plastic Christmas trees now. They’re hard to tell from the real aluminum ones.
Milton Berle

I was only kicking down the Christmas tree to get the star on top.
Ray Bradbury

I don’t know what I believe. I guess that makes me a christmas tree agnostic.
Stephanie Perkins

Only look what is still on the ugly old Christmas tree!” said he, trampling on the branches, so that they all cracked beneath his feet. And the Tree beheld all the beauty of the flowers, and the freshness in the garden; he beheld himself, and wished he had remained in his dark corner in the loft; he thought of his first youth in the woods, of the merry Christmas Eve, and of the little Mice who had listened with so much pleasure to the story of Klumpy-Dumpy.
Hans Christian Andersen

A Christmas tree, the perfect gift for a guy. The plant is already dead.
Jay Leno

The Christmas tree, twinkling with lights, had a mountain of gifts piled up beneath it, like offerings to the great god of excess.
Tess Gerritsen

A dog looking at a lit Christmas tree thinks: they finally put the light in the toilet.
Romano Bertola

Christmas trees don’t grow on trees; they need rainbows, lumberjacks, and Leprechauns on unicorns playing jock jams on glockenspiels.
Ryan Ross

Make your plate look like a Christmas tree, I tell people, mostly green with splashes of other bright colors.
Victoria Moran

There’s no experience quite like cutting your own live Christmas tree out of your neighbor’s yard.
Dan Florence

True natural Christmas trees

The smell of pine needles, spruce and the smell of a Christmas tree, those to me, are the scents of the holidays.
Blake Lively

Christmas is a very enjoyable event ever. It is a great feast for everyone. Kids, adults and grandparents. Everyone enjoy this occasion very much. Parents give presents to their children and this brings happiness in their hearts. An enormous amount of joy comes through this period which is a real gem for us. Therefore how could we avoid talking of one of the main symbol of this religious celebration, which is certainly the Christmas Tree, so let’s read about its fascinating history.

The Christmas tree today is a common custom to most of us. There are many interesting connections to ancient traditions such as Egyptian and Roman customs, early Christian practices, and Victorian nostalgia. However, most scholars point to Germany as being the origin of the Christmas tree.

Long before the advent of Christianity, plants and trees that remained green all year had a special meaning for people in the winter. Just as people today decorate their homes during the festive season with pine, spruce, and fir trees, ancient peoples hung evergreen boughs over their doors and windows. In many countries it was believed that evergreens would keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits, and illness.

In the Northern hemisphere, the shortest day and longest night of the year falls on December 21 or December 22 and is called the winter solstice. Many ancient people believed that the sun was a god and that winter came every year because the sun god had become sick and weak. They celebrated the solstice because it meant that at last the sun god would begin to get well. Evergreen boughs reminded them of all the green plants that would grow again when the sun god was strong and summer would return.

The ancient Egyptians worshipped a god called Ra, who had the head of a hawk and wore the sun as a blazing disk in his crown. At the solstice, when Ra began to recover from his illness, the Egyptians filled their homes with green palm rushes, which symbolized for them the triumph of life over death.

Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree

Early Romans marked the solstice with a feast called Saturnalia in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture. The Romans knew that the solstice meant that soon, farms and orchards would be green and fruitful. To mark the occasion, they decorated their homes and temples with evergreen boughs.

In Northern Europe the mysterious Druids, the priests of the ancient Celts, also decorated their temples with evergreen boughs as a symbol of everlasting life. The fierce Vikings in Scandinavia thought that evergreens were the special plant of the sun god, Balder.

One of the earliest stories relating back to Germany is about Saint Boniface. In 722, he encountered some pagans who were about to sacrifice a child at the base of a huge oak tree. He cut down the tree to prevent the sacrifice and a Fir tree grew up at the base of the oak. He then told everyone that this lovely evergreen, with its branches pointing to heaven, was a holy tree – the tree of the Christ child, and a symbol of His promise of eternal life.

Germany is credited with starting the Christmas tree tradition as we now know it in the 16th century when devout Christians brought decorated trees into their homes. Some built Christmas pyramids of wood and decorated them with evergreens and candles if wood was scarce. Another story tells that perhaps it was Martin Luther responsible for the origin of the Christmas tree.

This story says that one Christmas Eve, about the year 1500, he was walking through the snow-covered woods and was struck by the beauty of the snow glistened trees. Their branches, dusted with snow, shimmered in the moon light. When he got home, he set up a small fir tree and shared the story with his children. He decorated the Christmas tree with small candles, which he lighted in honor of Christ’s birth.

Another legend says that in the early 16th century, people in Germany combined two customs that had been practiced in different countries around the globe. The Paradise tree (a fir tree decorated with apples) represented the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden.

Christmas tree in Rio de Janeiro

The Christmas Light, a small, pyramid-like frame, usually decorated with glass balls, tinsel and a candle on top, was a symbol of the birth of Christ as the Light of the World. Changing the tree’s apples to tinsel balls and cookies and combining this new tree with the light placed on top, the Germans created the tree that many of us know today.

In the 1840s and 50s, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert popularized the Christmas tree in England. Prince Albert decorated a tree and ever since that time, the English, because of their love for their Queen, copied her Christmas customs including the Christmas tree and ornaments. An engraving of the Royal Family celebrating Christmas at Windsor was published in 1848 and their German traditions were copied and adapted.

Another story about the origin of the Christmas tree says that late in the Middle Ages, Germans and Scandinavians placed evergreen trees inside their homes or just outside their doors to show their hope that spring would soon come.

Most 19th-century Americans found Christmas trees an oddity. The first record of one being on display was in the 1830s by the German settlers of Pennsylvania, although trees had been a tradition in many German homes much earlier. The Pennsylvania German settlements had community trees as early as 1747. But, as late as the 1840s Christmas trees were seen as pagan symbols and not accepted by most Americans.

It is not surprising that, like many other festive Christmas customs, the tree was adopted so late in America. To the New England Puritans, Christmas was sacred. The pilgrims’s second governor, William Bradford, wrote that he tried hard to stamp out “pagan mockery” of the observance, penalizing any frivolity. The influential Oliver Cromwell preached against “the heathen traditions” of Christmas carols, decorated trees, and any joyful expression that desecrated “that sacred event.” In 1659, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted a law making any observance of December 25 (other than a church service) a penal offense; people were fined for hanging decorations. That stern solemnity continued until the 19th century, when the influx of German and Irish immigrants undermined the Puritan legacy.

The early 20th century saw Americans decorating their trees mainly with homemade ornaments, while the German-American sect continued to use apples, nuts, and marzipan cookies. Popcorn joined in after being dyed bright colors and interlaced with berries and nuts. Electricity brought about Christmas lights, making it possible for Christmas trees to glow for days on end. With this, Christmas trees began to appear in town squares across the country and having a Christmas tree in the home became an American tradition.

Christmas tree best wishes

Research into customs of various cultures shows that greenery was often brought into homes at the time of the winter solstice. It symbolized life in the midst of death in many cultures. The Romans were known to deck their homes with evergreens during of Kalends of January 15. Living trees were also brought into homes during the old Germany feast of Yule, which originally was a two month feast beginning in November. The Yule tree was planted in a tub and brought into the home. But there is no evidence that the Christmas tree is a direct descendent of the Yule tree.

Evidence does point to the Paradise tree however. This story goes back to the 11th century religious plays. One of the most popular was the Paradise Play. The play depicted the story of the creation of Adam and Eve, their sin, and their banishment from Paradise. The only prop on the stage was the Paradise tree, a fir tree adorned with apples. The play would end with the promise of the coming Savior and His Incarnation. The people had grown so accustomed to the Paradise tree, that they began putting their own Paradise tree up in their homes on December 24.

Christmas trees have been sold commercially in the United States since about 1850. In 1979, the National Christmas Tree was not lighted except for the top ornament. This was done in honor of the American hostages in Iran. The tallest living Christmas tree is believed to be the 122-foot, 91-year-old Douglas fir in the town of Woodinville, Washington. The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree tradition began in 1933. Franklin Pierce, the 14th president, brought the Christmas tree tradition to the White House. In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge started the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony now held every year on the White House lawn.

Since 1966, the National Christmas Tree Association has given a Christmas tree to the President and first family. Most Christmas trees are cut weeks before they get to a retail outlet. In 1912, the first community Christmas tree in the United States was erected in New York City. Christmas trees generally take six to eight years to mature. Christmas trees are grown in all 50 states including Hawaii and Alaska. 90 percent of all Christmas trees are grown on farms. More than 1,000,000 acres of land have been planted with Christmas trees. On average, over 2,000 Christmas trees are planted per acre.

You should never burn your Christmas tree in the fireplace. It can contribute to creosote buildup. Other types of trees such as cherry and hawthorns were used as Christmas trees in the past. Thomas Edison’s assistants came up with the idea of electric lights for Christmas trees. In 1963, the National Christmas Tree was not lit until December 22nd because of a national 30-day period of mourning following the assassination of President Kennedy. Teddy Roosevelt banned the Christmas tree from the White House for environmental reasons. On the contrary the 2020 Christmas Tree is an 18 ½ foot Fraser Fir from West Virginia. It will serve as a centerpiece for Christmas decorations in the Blue Room of the White House. The White House Christmas Tree must stand 18-19 feet tall and reach the ceiling of the Blue Room, where the chandelier is removed each holiday season to accommodate the tree.

And last but not least, if you want to choose the perfect Christmas tree visit the website of The American Christmas Tree Association (ACTA) which is a non-profit organization established to help families create holiday memories and build traditions by choosing the perfect Christmas tree. www.christmastreeassociation.org/

Instead if you need a good short story for your children about Christmas or the Christmas tree, you can find many of them at this link:
https://americanliterature.com/author/hans-christian-andersen/short-story/the-fir-tree

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