I can't tell you how scary it can be walking onto a movie and suddenly joining this family, it's like going to somebody else's Christmas dinner, everyone knows everyone, and you're there and you're not quite sure what you're supposed to be doing.
One Christmas I had no money, and so I went home and just, like, wrote a poem; I mean, I didn't write them, but I just handed out poems as Christmas presents. Like, 'Here's a Pablo Neruda poem that really made me think of you.'
In Denmark, the annual Christmas party is probably the most important cultural institution in the country.
Throughout my teenage years, I read 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens every December. It was a story that never failed to excite me, for as well as being a Dickens enthusiast, I have always loved ghost stories.
It may be a cliche, but it's true - the build-up to Christmas is so much more pleasurable than the actual day itself.
My parents were over the moon when I had some success with Christmas songs because that was the time of the year that meant so much to them. They were able to see their loved ones, and it was great to hear their son's voice on the radio while they visited.
For more than a decade, I led an organization that put on an elaborate Christmas program each December. It was a big production, with over 250 people participating in more than 20 performances. By the end of the season, everyone who participated was exhausted.
Yep, I'm a geek. Ever since I got the Millennium Falcon for Christmas in 1978. And I still have it, in perfect condition, just without the box... but I still play with it!
I like animals. I like people who like animals. I hate people who love animals to the point they lose their sense of reason. I'm talking the 'my computer wallpaper is my dog,' 'I hang a Christmas stocking for my cat' crowd.
I don't like to see Christmas trees torn down.
The worst gift I have ever gotten on Christmas is going to see Tim Allen in 'The Santa Clause.'
I was nine or 10 years old and my father was sacked on Christmas Day. He was a manager, the results had not been good, he lost a game on December 22 or 23. On Christmas Day, the telephone rang and he was sacked in the middle of our lunch.
I don't have a real recipe with measurements for my chicken stew. I just kind of make it up as I go. I made it for the first time one Christmas when I came home from college. It's guaranteed to cure a cold.
Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas.
When I was young, we always went to our posh cousins at Christmas. My dad made sure we had new shoes and clean clothes - he was really proud - and that's why I felt different from everyone living around me. We had the first television on the estate, the first fridge.
Most of the soap operas always use the Christmas special to kill huge quantities of their characters. So they have trams coming off their rails, or cars slamming into each other or burning buildings. It's a general clean-out.
The sight of people sleeping on the streets hits us hardest around Christmas and New Year. We see them camped out alone on the freezing concrete, and we think, with a rush of guilt, about heading home to our families and our soft beds.
I had a year-round Christmas tree with nothing but colored vinyl 45s hanging on it, like, old Elvis records and stuff.
I started DJing, breakdancing and MCing in the '70s and I got my record deal in 1979 with 'Christmas Rap.'
I hate Christmas, really. I don't really give presents away or expect any.
I am one of those people who is not very patient in the makeup chair. I have been offered movies like 'Planet of the Apes' and stuff like 'The Grinch Who Stole Christmas' and I turned them down.
He put a ring in the toe of a stocking. On Christmas Eve, we opened our stockings and it was there at the bottom of the toe. Then he got down on his knees and he was shaking.
The Christmas market at the Barcelona Cathedral sells all kinds of things for your Nativity scene. It will also give you a good idea of Catalan culture.
I beg people not to accept the seasonal ritual of well-timed charity on Christmas Eve. It's blasphemy.
One Christmas, I wrote a nativity play. But nobody turned up on the day of the performance apart from my brother and my cousins, so I just read the whole script onstage and made my brother pretend to be one of the animals at the inn.
Christmas is never going to go away, and it's always going to be there. And there's always room for one more Christmas song, I think.
The denominational world tries to pressure its members to focus on the birth of Christ, but in doing so layers of guilt are imposed, and competition gets complicated as one Christmas program tries to outdo the other.
In my experience, those who make the biggest fuss about not spending much at Christmas are generally the ones who buy what they want and eat where they want 12 months a year.
Christmas is a rare occasion when we are reminded that we have obligations to people we did not choose to be related to, and that love is not just a spontaneous feeling but something we sometimes really have to work at, with people we may not even much like.
I feel like I've got a pretty relatively extensive Christmas sweatshirt collection.
One Christmas build-up tradition, however, has totally bypassed me - that of going up to town and 'doing a show.'
My family is Jamaican and Cuban, but we would go to see our Jamaican side every summer for three months and every Christmas. One of the things I used to love was climbing trees and picking ackee fruit for breakfast.
I think it's kind of difficult to write a good Christmas song because you have a narrow framework of references that you have to work within, and at the same time you want to do something that's personally original and hopefully somewhat unique.
I grew up with three little brothers. Every Christmas, we'd have piles of toy trucks and Lincoln Logs and G.I. Joes under the tree. Those were for them. For me? My No. 1 favorite present of all time: books. Two or three tall stacks of wonderful stories that I could lose myself in for weeks.
We had a house in Baga, Goa, that we would visit every Christmas vacation. It was called Love House. The toilet was outside the house. We had no water; someone had to get it from the well. My dad was huge then, but he could walk, go to the local tavern, have a beer and take an auto back.
I'm Jewish, so I don't really do Christmas gifts, and Hanukkah is not as big a deal as gifts are concerned, so I never actually give gifts.
I always liked it when people go back in time to discover things about themselves, like with 'A Christmas Carol' and you're getting a tour of your life by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future.
Fantastic! Right in the middle of that long stretch between Christmas and Spring Break, your coats are getting dirty, everything's dark, dingy - what a great time for a movie!
I hate to say it, but Christmas as a kid was always a moneymaking venture for me. I played trumpet, and a friend of mine who played trombone and a guy who played tuba, every Christmas we'd go out for three or four days beforehand and play Christmas carols on our horns.
Now that I'm an adult and have a big say in what we eat on Christmas Day, turkey doesn't even make it on to the starting grid for consideration. It isn't just my least favourite meat; it's my least favourite protein.
I used to know Jennifer Love Hewitt. We lived in the same apartment building when I was about... jeez, I guess it was when I was doing 'Christmas Vacation', so I was about 13 or 14.
I'm the youngest of three boys, and my oldest brother was super into Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton and played guitar. I wanted to be like him, so I asked for a guitar of my own for Christmas in '93.
I'm still a Chicagoan in the fact that I can't do Christmas with sand and palm trees. It just doesn't compute - it's not Christmas unless your face hurts when you step outside.
The cheese board is my big treat at Christmas that I have to deny myself during the rest of year.
Most Americans acquire dogs impulsively and for dubious reasons: as a Christmas gift for the kids. Because they saw one in a movie. To match the new living-room furniture. Because they moved to the suburbs and see a dog as part of the package.
I wouldn't recommend young kids see 'Speedway Junkie.' It's definitely an age-appropriate movie - dark and realistic and edgy. If young kids want to see me, go see the Christmas movie.
The Christmas genre is a field that's been well-ploughed.
For Christmas 1999, my husband surprised me with a trip to Disney World. Along with our boys, we were standing on the roof of the Contemporary Hotel at midnight on New Year's Eve 2000 watching fireworks explode over every amusement park in Orlando. It was a magical way to celebrate the millennial, and a never-to-be-forgotten Christmas present.
At the age of 12, my parents gave me a chemistry set for Christmas, and experimentation soon became a consuming passion in my life.
When I was a child, I always went to my grandmother's house in Nuremberg for Christmas. My uncle would leave the room, saying he needed the toilet, and then he would reappear dressed as Santa Claus. I was really scared - I'd have to go and hide behind an armchair.
Being a traditionalist, I'm a rabid sucker for Christmas. In July, I'm already worried that there are only 146 shopping days left.
I love London in the rare parts of the year when it's quiet, and no time is more reliably quiet than the week between Christmas and New Year.
Ranking among the greatest Christmas movie classics, 'It's a Wonderful Life' tells a beautiful story about the priceless value of relationships.
Christmas is always a great time because I get to be around family and spend time with my brother, nieces, and nephews, so that's what I plan to do. It's great to disconnect from everything.
One Christmas, Dennis Dermody, the movie critic of 'Paper,' gave me 'Rock Hudson: A Gathering of Friends,' the master invitation list from Rock Hudson's memorial service. It's so great. Everyone's in it, with personal addresses all bound into a book. Someone else once gave me Ike Turner's will. I get great stuff.
For me, hearing my voice is sometimes a little nauseating, especially at Christmas.
I played guitar from the age of four or five. Every year there would be a slightly larger triangular box under the Christmas tree, until finally I got one that was big enough to make a proper sound.
Always be prepared if someone asks you what you want for Christmas. Give brand names, the store that sells the merchandise, and, if possible, exact model numbers so they can't go wrong. Be the type who's impossible to buy for, so they have to get what you want.
My Christmases have always just been very simple and about family.
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