Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. — Charles Dickens. English writer and social critic (1812–1870)
I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time. A kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time. The only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely.
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 do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday -- the longer, the better -- from the great boarding school where we are forever working at our arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest.
Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.