Merry Christmas!

 We wish all of our readers a very Merry Christmas and the happiest of New Years!

Hank, Hallie, Lucy,  Susan, Deborah, Rhys & Julia

 

“I sincerely hope your Christmas in Hertfordshire may abound in the gaieties which that season generally brings, and that your beaux will be so numerous as to prevent your feeling the loss of the three of whom we shall deprive you.”
~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Pray, dear madam, another glass; it is Christmas time, it will do you no harm.”
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, The Kickleburrys on the Rhine

“He had been to see Mrs. Erlich just before starting home for the holidays, and found her making German Christmas cakes. She took him into the kitchen and explained the almost holy traditions that governed this complicated cookery. Her excitement and seriousness as she beat and stirred were very pretty, Claude thought. She told off on her fingers the many ingredients, but he believed there were things she did not name: the fragrance of old friendships, the glow of early memories, belief in wonder-working rhymes and songs.”
~ Willa Cather, One of Ours

 

 “Fine old Christmas, with the snowy hair and ruddy face, had done his duty that year in the noblest fashion, and had set off his rich gifts of warmth and color with all the heightening contrast of frost and snow.”
~ George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

 

 

“The rooms were very still while the pages were softly turned and the winter sunshine crept in to touch the bright heads and serious faces with a Christmas greeting.”  
~ Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

 “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; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!”
~ Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers