I stone got crazy when I saw somebody run down them strings with a bottleneck. My eyes lit up like a Christmas tree and I said that I had to learn.
Every Christmas should begin with the sound of bells, and when I was a child mine always did. But they were sleigh bells, not church bells, for we lived in a part of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where there were no churches.
In London the day after Christmas (Boxing Day), it began to snow: my first snow in England. For five years, I had been tactfully asking, 'Do you ever have snow at all?' as I steeled myself to the six months of wet, tepid gray that make up an English winter. 'Ooo, I do remember snow,' was the usual reply, 'when I were a lad.'
You know how on Christmas day, the day feels different, even if you're just sitting in your chair waiting for your girlfriend to put her face on and you haven't even started any of the festivities yet, the day still feels different. The electrons are fatter and pushier.
In 1934, the American Jewish charities offered to find homes for 300 German refugee children. We were on the SS Washington, bound for New York, Christmas 1934.
I made a Christmas album a couple of years ago and just put it out on my Web site. It kind of smacked of this flavor. All of the reviews said it was Western swing even when it was Christmas standards.
My grade 3 teacher put on a kids' Christmas concert, and I played the kazoo, so my mother bought me a trumpet. I took lessons for eight years, was in the Kitsilano Boys Band, and I played in the Vancouver Junior Symphony for two years.
Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!
I like, 'I Believe In Father Christmas' - that is one of my favorites it is a lovely composition; 'Colder Than Winter' as well. There are so many beautiful songs.
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.
My mother-in-law has come round to our house at Christmas seven years running. This year we're having a change. We're going to let her in.
I'm so depressed. Christmas is the worst of all. Holidays are terrible, worse than Sundays. I get melancholia.
Every singer eventually gets around to a Christmas disc.
For those, like me, who can't rely on being given a home smoker this Christmas, you can build your own approximation with just a roll of tin foil and a big wok or pan for which you have a lid.
At Christmas, 'It's a Wonderful Life' makes me cry in exactly the same places every time, even though I know it's coming.
I know that a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania is about the most random place for a country singer to come from, but I had an awesome childhood.
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 of my favorite times of year is around Christmas when my entire family gets together and we make tamales together. It's a full two-day event, and we create an assembly line. It's awesome because everyone has his or her own part in making the dish. It's so much fun.
I've always been shy, but I see that as a good thing because it kept me focused on music. When I was in seventh grade, I asked my parents for a mobile recording system for Christmas, and I got it. I didn't come out of my room for years after that. I'd get invited to the movies and I'd say, 'I'm gonna finish a couple of demos.'
Lyndon B. Johnson thought he'd have the boys home from Vietnam by Christmas - for four Christmases in a row (he never shifted course, and lost his presidency for it).
We didn't have a whole lot of money when I was growing up either. I would always ask for magic books or magic tricks for my birthday or for Christmas and the rest of the year I either had to mow lawns or find part time jobs to help supplement the cost of doing magic.
The truth is that our way of celebrating the Christmas season does spring from myriad cultures and sources, from St. Nicholas to Coca-Cola advertising campaigns.
A Christmas Carol is such a fool-proof story you can't louse it up.
The cheese board is my big treat at Christmas that I have to deny myself during the rest of year.
When you travel on Christmas, for you as the traveler - whether you're in 1A or 39D - there is a mental state that you have to put yourself in: that you're traveling at the busiest time of the year, and you're going to take whatever comes your way.
Christmas is over and Business is Business.
My mother accidentally gave me food poisoning. She fed me baby carrots for a snack before Christmas dinner - but they had expired in June! I threw up for the next 24 hours.
I celebrate Christmas with wilful glee.
Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind.
When I was five years old, I auditioned for the role of 'Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol.'
I was talking to one of my aunties at Christmas and she said she didn't think it was ever in my nature to go against the grain, that I was always a good boy. I think she was right - I did always want to be good.
I'm well-travelled so I can see places coming up. I went to St. Croix in the West Indies at Christmas and it had been hit by a really bad tornado. Values there have gone down but I guarantee they will be up again in eight years. So I'll get in now while it's cheap as chips.
Please to put a nickel, please to put a dime. How petitions trickle in at Christmas time!
We consider Christmas as the encounter, the great encounter, the historical encounter, the decisive encounter, between God and mankind. He who has faith knows this truly; let him rejoice.
But Tammy Faye calls me, and Ron Jeremy calls me, Erik Estrada sends me a Christmas card every year.
Things change; your priorities change in life. So I'd never think of riding 100 miles on Christmas Day now, because I've got two kids, and it's selfish.
