Christmas Time

I'm officially on Christmas time. That means some late nights, a few sleep-ins and a lot more napping than usual. I have a pile of marking that will probably not leave my bag until the Sunday night before I go back to work, and there are of course the usual travel plans.
It also means that I will be reading Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol -- as it is a holiday tradition my wife and I started our first Christmas together. From that book there is a particular quote that I like to think of as words to live by. They are spoken by Scrooge's nephew in their exchange before Scrooge first sees Marley in his door knocker.

"I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- 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, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"