When I was really young, I loved the movie ‘White Christmas’ – I still do – and I thought Rosemary Clooney was so pretty. When I was, like, nine, I would tell people, ‘You know who I kind of look like? Rosemary Clooney.’
My Christmas present to myself each year is to see how much air travel can open up the world and take me to places as far from sheltered California and Japan as possible.
I was once part of a Christmas cabaret. I sang ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.’ I tap-danced. I had a ten-gallon hat. It was quite absurd.
I loved the first Christmas I had in England.
One Christmas I had no money, and so I went home and just, like, wrote a poem; I mean, I didn’t write them, but I just handed out poems as Christmas presents. Like, ‘Here’s a Pablo Neruda poem that really made me think of you.’
My mother was a not-too-devoted atheist. She went to Episcopal church on Christmas Eve every year, and that was mostly it.
We always had lutefisk for Christmas dinner, after which Dad read from the Norwegian Bible.
Belief is invisible, so there is enough space for everyone’s. Except in the shops at Christmas.
I used to know Jennifer Love Hewitt. We lived in the same apartment building when I was about… jeez, I guess it was when I was doing ‘Christmas Vacation’, so I was about 13 or 14.
Christmas is a story that has both religious and pagan origins, and to ignore its power is to ignore the power of myth – those symbols and legends that help us to ground our lives.
When ‘I’m Sorry’ came out and became such a huge hit, that made ‘Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree’ start selling. Then that became a huge, huge hit.
The No. 1 best-selling Christmas album of all time is from Kenneth Bruce Gorelick, the Jewish smooth-jazz legend Kenny G. American Jews have always produced a lot of holiday music, just not Hanukkah music.
‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ is my number one biggest influence artistically in every way.
I became hugely overweight and then hated myself because it was a form of self-abuse, something over which I had no control. I think the thing compulsive over-eaters want to achieve is that stuffed-full Christmas afternoon feeling.
Mummy weighed sweets and nuts so that everyone would get exactly the same amount. During the year, everything is measured roughly, but at Christmas, it has to be absolutely fair. That’s why it’s such a strenuous time.
The tradition of putting candles on Christmas trees actually began in Germany. The person who came up with the idea is thought to have been Martin Luther, father of the Reformation.
I love the excess of Christmas. The shopping season that begins in September, the bad pop star recordings of Christmas carols, the decorations that don’t know when to come down.
Belgium’s 1986 team is like the Christmas movie that they bring out every single year. That World Cup is something we get to see and hear about all the time. It is part of our general education in Belgium.
I write in my house, at my desk, where I have Christmas lights strung over it to try and convince me that I’m having a good time. I can’t really write anywhere else.
There’s a little vanity chair that Charlie gave me the first Christmas we knew each other. I’ll not be parting with that, nor our bed – the four-poster – I’ll be needing that to die in.
Windows are as essential to office prestige as Christmas is to retailing.
I love Christmas. I really do love Christmas. I love being with my family and I love snow. I love the music and the lights and all of it.
I intend to keep writing Christmas songs. There’s still a lot more about Christmas that can be captured and feel like old-time Christmas. A lot of the traditions haven’t been explained in song.
Come Christmas Eve, we usually go to my mom and dad’s. Everybody brings one gift and then we play that game when we all steal it from each other. Some are really cool, others are useful and some are a bit out there.
I got up one Christmas morning and we didn’t have nothing to eat. We didn’t have an apple, we didn’t have an orange, we didn’t have a cake, we didn’t have nothing.
