Quick answer: Here are 27 Christmas quotes about the spirit of the season, from Charles Dickens and Dr. Seuss to presidents, preachers and newspaper columnists. Each one is credited to its author and, where known, the book, speech or year it comes from, so you can use it with confidence in a card, message or post.
The Christmas season is busy, and with all the shopping and preparations it is easy to lose some of its sweetness. In this collection, writers, politicians, entertainers and faith leaders remind us why the season matters. Quotes marked “often attributed to” have no confirmed original source.
Keeping Christmas in your heart
- “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” Ebenezer Scrooge, in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843)
- “It is not even the beginning of Christmas unless it is Christmas in the heart.” Richard Roberts, in Contemporary Christ
- “Christmas isn’t just a day, it’s a frame of mind.” From Miracle on 34th Street (1947), based on the story by Valentine Davies
- “Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.” Often attributed to US President Calvin Coolidge
- “Christmas … is not an external event at all, but a piece of one’s home that one carries in one’s heart.” Freya Stark, travel writer, in “The Wise Men”
- “Christmas is not in tinsel and lights and outward show. The secret lies in an inner glow.” Wilfred A. Peterson, in The Art of Living
- “I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.” Harlan Miller, columnist, in Better Homes and Gardens
Family, home and togetherness
- “The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.” Burton Hillis, in Better Homes and Gardens
- “For centuries men have kept an appointment with Christmas. Christmas means fellowship, feasting, giving and receiving, a time of good cheer, home.” W. J. Tucker, in Pulpit Preaching
- “Christmas is a bridge. We need bridges as the river of time flows past. Today’s Christmas should mean creating happy hours for tomorrow and reliving those of yesterday.” Gladys Taber, in Still Cove Journal
- “Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth…” Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (1836-37)
- “Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall.” Larry Wilde, in The Merry Book of Christmas
- “There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.” Erma Bombeck, humorist, in I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression (1970)
Giving and kindness
- “I always like the gifts I get, / But how I love the gifts I give!” Carolyn Wells, “A Christmas Thought”
- “Christmas is forever, not for just one day, / for loving, sharing, giving, are not to put away…” Norman W. Brooks, “Let Every Day Be Christmas”
- “Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world … Then you can keep Christmas! But you can never keep it alone.” Henry van Dyke, “Keeping Christmas”
- “At Christmas be merry and thankful withal, / And feast your poor neighbours, the great and the small.” Thomas Tusser, A Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1557)
Beyond the wrapping paper
- “It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags.” Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1957)
- “To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year.” E. B. White, in The Second Tree from the Corner (1954)
- “There is no ideal Christmas; only the one Christmas you decide to make as a reflection of your values, desires, affections, traditions.” Bill McKibben, in Hundred Dollar Holiday
Faith and the first Christmas
- “Were it not for the shepherds, there would have been no reception. And were it not for a group of stargazers, there would have been no gifts.” Max Lucado, pastor and author, in God Came Near
- “No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor.” Archbishop Óscar Romero of San Salvador, as quoted in The Washington Post (24 December 2004)
- “This is the Christmas that a war-weary world has prayed for through long and awful years.” US President Harry S. Truman, lighting the National Christmas Tree on 24 December 1945, months after the Second World War ended
Classic lines from literature
- “‘God bless us every one!’ said Tiny Tim, the last of all.” Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)
- “It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.” Charles Dickens, on Scrooge, in A Christmas Carol
- “At Christmas I no more desire a rose / Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth.” William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act I, Scene 1
- “The time draws near the birth of Christ: / The moon is hid; the night is still; / The Christmas bells from hill to hill / Answer each other in the mist.” Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), section XXVIII
Tips for using Christmas quotes
- Credit the author. A name and a source make a quote more meaningful and help stop misattributions spreading.
- Keep it short in cards. One or two lines fit best. Longer passages, such as Henry van Dyke’s “Keeping Christmas”, work well read aloud at a gathering.
- Match the audience. Faith-based lines suit family and church groups; the lines about family, giving and the season suit friends and colleagues of any background.
For more, see our collection of Christmas quotes from C. S. Lewis, our Christmas phrases for clients, and our New Year greetings for the week after.
Frequently asked questions
Who wrote “God bless us every one”?
Charles Dickens. Tiny Tim says it in A Christmas Carol (1843).
Did Calvin Coolidge really say “Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind”?
The line is widely credited to him and appears in popular Christmas anthologies, but we could not trace it to a speech or writing of his, so we mark it “often attributed to”.
Which Christmas quote is best for a card?
Short, warm lines work best, for example Scrooge’s “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year” or Burton Hillis’s line about a happy family around the tree.
Why do some lists show different wording for the same quote?
Quotes are often shortened or paraphrased as they are shared. Where the original text is long, we have shortened it with an ellipsis (…) rather than changing the words.
Attributions checked in October 2026 against Wikiquote’s sourced Christmas collection and the original texts of Dickens, Shakespeare, Tennyson and Tusser.
