Being half Jewish, we grew up with Christmas trees but had Jewish ornaments.

Christmas is the time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell government what they want and their kids pay for it.

Unless we make Christmas an occasion to share our blessings, all the snow in Alaska won't make it 'white'.

A lot of sequins for New Year's! Red, green, white - I fail at all of that because I'm always in black. But for Christmas, I do love wearing cute dresses with tights and a pair of boots.

Is it possible Hanukkah doesn't inspire folksy songs? Plot lines may be a part. The Christmas story has a lot of material to work with. There's Jesus and his birth, the wise men, their gifts and tons of frankincense.

The real reason Jews don't have more Hanukkah music is that, historically, American Jewish singer-songwriters were too busy making Christmas music. 'White Christmas,' 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,' 'Silver Bells' and 'The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting)' were all written by Jews.

I worked for a big department store, and strangely, on my first day, they put me in charge of Christmas wrapping. I didn't know how to wrap a present and make it not look like it fell off a truck.

Every year, like a good Catholic, I wait for Christmas. Putting up the lights, decorating the tree, making sweets and then unwrapping gifts on Christmas morning... it's a tradition my family has followed since I was very little.

Our last jam session was this past Christmas. Dad played his harmonica, mom sang in English and Italian, and I played guitar. I'm so happy that we could share that musical experience for one last time.

You are not practicing Judaism if you celebrate Christmas.

A barn with cattle and horses is the place to begin Christmas; after all, that's where the original event happened, and that same smell was the first air that the Christ Child breathed.

We used to indulge hopelessly as a family at Christmas. When the children were little, I dressed up as Father Christmas. They knew it was a gag, but they loved it. I remember stealing into their bedrooms at 1 A.M. and filling the stockings up at the end of the bed.

From the leg lamp to Ralphie's tongue getting stuck on a frozen pole to that BB-gun incident, 'A Christmas Story' has left its mark on all our brains, so much so that it sometimes feels like this story is our own.

My mom used to keep all her Christmas cards in a basket bedecked with red ribbon, and I loved to look at them all and read all the letters.

Most of us remember Nat King Cole as a vocalist. His warm, grainy baritone is still so closely identified with such familiar ballads as 'Stardust' and 'The Christmas Song' that it's hard to imagine anyone else performing them.

For a Jewish guy, I've recorded a lot of Christmas albums.

I love Halloween, trick or treating and decorating the house. And I love Thanksgiving, because of the football and the fall weather. And of course, I love Christmas - that's my favorite of all!

Christmas Day itself hasn't always been great. My parents went abroad when I was very young, and I went to boarding school. We had a few Christmases before that - I remember a big sack of presents and Mummy cooking goose.

I drew a lot. I always had sketchbooks. My parents were really great about any gift-giving holiday - birthdays, Hanukkah, Christmas - it was always art supplies for my brother and I.

'I am a bad mother.' Every Christmas, this is what I think because the holiday season fills me with such anxiety. I'm sure that other mothers are happily baking cookies, decorating trees, and finding perfect gifts for everyone.

Like with me, like around '97, for Christmas my parents bought me an MPC 2000 sampler and a little eight-track cassette recorder. And I started sampling records and, you know, producing hip-hop beats. And it got to the point where I realized - I innately realized that the music I liked the most was made by people that played instruments.

'A Christmas Carol' is an extravagantly symbolic thing - as rich in symbols as Christmas pudding is rich in raisins.

The real evidence for Jesus and Christianity is in how Jesus and the Christianity based on him manifest themselves in the lives of practicing Christians.

I absolutely adore Agatha Christie; so much so that when I received a kitten for my Christmas present, I called her Agatha, and I already have a cat called Hercule!

I'm one of those people who had Christmas and my birthday always combined, and generally, my birthday was pretty much ignored. But my parents are always good about making some kind of special effort to make me feel like I also have a birthday that exists.

I owe my life to my father. I remember that my first Christmas present was a ball. In the district where we lived, there weren't many kids who had one.

Christmas 1972 was a lonely time for Kissinger, as well as for his boss, and a period of serious reflection. Kissinger was then a bachelor, enamored of the tall, elegant, but elusive WASP Nancy Maginnes, but still very much a bachelor - Washington's most sought-after bachelor.

To me, the most important thing is to wear something that I love and feel comfortable in, and Christmas is a great opportunity to get one of my old favourites out.

Every day is like Halloween or Christmas eve for me. I go to bed, and I'm so excited to get back to work. I'm very lucky that I have a career like that 'cause not many people do.

It is never too late to get into tennis! While I started playing at the age of 8 when my parents gave me a tennis racquet for Christmas, tennis is a lifelong sport that can be enjoyed by people of almost any age. It's also something you never forget once you learn.

Music is my thing. It's my thing; it's what I love. It's what I do. It's football to me; it's Christmas to me; religion to me; poetry to me.

I went to Sunday School and liked the stories about Christ and the Christmas star. They were beautiful. They made you warm and happy to think about. But I didn't believe them.

Christmas was always a big holiday in our family. Every Christmas Eve before we'd go to bed, my mom and dad would read to us two or three stories and they would always be 'The Happy Prince,' 'The Gift of the Magi' and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas,' and I would like to keep that alive.

My younger brother will remember that he received a transistor radio for Christmas. I took it apart and it never worked again.

At school, there was an annual school disco and I'd be standing in my bedroom wondering what to wear for hours on end. Eventually I'd arrive at a decision that was just the most ridiculous costume you could have ever devised - I think it was probably knitted Christmas jumpers on top of buttoned-up white shirts.

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.

Christmas is a holiday that persecutes the lonely, the frayed, and the rejected.

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.

One of my first favorite books was 'The 12 Days of Christmas,' and I would just go up to people and say, 'I can sing 'The 12 Days of Christmas,' and I would make them sit through me reciting it, and I'd go all the way, each time. I've always hooked into lyrics.

Working on 'Nightmare Before Christmas,' I had endless arguments, like the studio saying, 'You can't have a main character that's got no eyeballs!' 'How is anybody going to feel for somebody with just eyesockets?' You know? So, it's those kind of things that really wear you down.

I detest 'Jingle Bells,' 'White Christmas,' 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,' and the obscene spending bonanza that nowadays seems to occupy not just December, but November and much of October, too.

Fragrance is a very personal gift, and I think that's why it makes a great Christmas gift. There's a very distinct signature to it, so if you give it as a gift, I like to think that it's from a person that thinks very highly of you.

I remember wishing there was snow in L.A. And how jealous we used to get of those Christmas specials with kids playing in the snow.

Growing up, my earliest memories are listening to Sinatra Christmas albums.

For many, Christmas is also a time for coming together. But for others, service will come first.

You can't allow the forces of political correction to shut you up. I mean, why are people afraid to say, 'Merry Christmas?' Give me a break. If people don't like it, yeah, they can go do something else.

I love Christmas tree bulbs, and I started putting them in my paintings. You've got to plug this painting in, and it's got a rig in the back, so that each one can be replaced if it burns out.

Making your Christmas cake in September is perfect, as too fresh a cake crumbles when cut.

As we give presents at Christmas, we need to recognize that sharing our time and ourselves is such an important part of giving.

My favorite traditional Christmas movie that I like to watch is All Quiet on the Western Front. It's just not December without that movie in my house.