The opening line of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is a despondent Jo grumbling “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents!” As our story progresses, she discovers that she is able to be joyful in the midst of giving, not receiving.
So many of our favorite works of cinema and literature revolve around this joyful time of year that we decide to implement a Christmas Day read-aloud tradition.
So we come to today’s question: what are your favorite quotes about Christmas from books and movies?
I will go first. In It’s a Wonderful Life,1 when Harry Bailey arrives at his brother’s home and raises his glass, we all go to pieces.
“To my brother George, the richest man in town!”
I am aware of the heartless backlash against this Christmas classic. If you are anti-Bailey, I will assume you are (a) made of stone or (b) just didn’t finish it.
I saw your post this morning and laughed out loud:
The first year they had a writing section on the SAT the question was about materialism and immediately it made me think of "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents ..." which I wrote and quoted as the first line of my essay. When that was over and I opened the sealed test booklet for Language Section Q&A I was horrified to find question 5 or 6 contained the same line. I was terrified they would think I had cheated and I'd get a 0 on my SAT ...
Thankfully, this did not happen. Probably because the graders of the Writing vs Language section are totally different. But that first line of Little Women will forever hold a special place in my heart.
Another favorite quote is, of course, Scrooge in A Christmas Carol after he discovers he hasn't yet been transported to Christmas Future ...
“I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”
Oh there are SO many! With relatives on my dad’s side of the family it’s always A Muppet Christmas Carol (“and Tiny Tim.....who did NOT die” or “light the lamp, not the rat!” or “even the vegetables don’t like him”). On my mom’s side it’s the 1970 musical SCROOGE, which is both comical (“what the devil am I doing in a pile of snow in the middle of the night?!?”) and about as tear-inducing for me as Harry Bailey’s toast. Here’s Scrooge’s ending speech (please picture a hunched Albert Finney in a Santa costume, approaching his scary-looking door knocker with a look of joy on his face): “Hello! I don’t know whether you can hear me, old Jacob Marley, and I don’t know whether or not I imagined the things I saw.....but between the pair of us, we finally made a merry Christmas, didn’t we? I must leave you now - must go and get ready. I’m going to have Christmas dinner with my family.” (music swells, everyone cries)