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.

My mother would give my brothers and me a pile of catalogues and let us pick what we wanted for Christmas.

And of course there's so much music in and around our family. I had a piano during Christmas because it's obviously useful through the season. There are so many people, songwriters, who are around.

In the spring of 1994 I decided not to seek reelection to the Senate. I had made the decision 12 years earlier, Christmas Day of 1982, just after I had been first elected to a full term, that I would do the best I could for a limited time.

I never really did Christmas before. Christmas Day? I mean - what's that? What's it all about? I was always flying on Christmas Day.

I got a guitar when I was about 14, for a Christmas present, and went from there.

So when I was 13, I basically left home and never returned and lived at home again. I would come home for a week at Christmas and two weeks in the summer only.

Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

I wanted an electric train for Christmas but I got the saxophone instead.

Now, a lot of what we are doing right now, quite frankly, is because of what happened on Christmas. Many of the things were kind of in the works. We were already planning, for example, the purchase and deployment of advanced imaging technology. You call them body scanners. We call them AITs (Advanced Imaging Technologies).

Godot is whatever it is in life that you are waiting for: 'I'm waiting to win the lottery. I'm waiting to fall in love'. For me, as a child, it was Christmas. At least that eventually came.

I love cooking during Christmas, all smells like the hot apple cider, the hot spiced wine.

My parents still treat Christmas like I'm thirteen years old.

My family makes these vinegars - out of everything from grapes to peaches and cherries. We go through the whole process with the giant vat and drainer, label them, and give them as Christmas presents.

I was a postman one Christmas and I developed a morbid fear of dogs.

You don't want your jewelry to make you look fat. A lot of what's out there now does - you just wind up looking like a Christmas tree.

My parents were kind of over protective people. Me and my sister had to play in the backyard all the time. They bought us bikes for Christmas but wouldn't let us ride in the street, we had to ride in the backyard. Another Christmas, my dad got me a basketball hoop and put it in the middle of the lawn! You can't dribble on grass.

The whole point of me doing a Christmas record and what I centered it around was the song 'Christmas with You' from the point-of-view of the soldiers in Iraq.

You know, I started my career in politics in 1967. I'm not new to this. I did not just fall off the Christmas tree. I understand the world is complex. I know that there are people out there who want to hurt other people.

Well, the album 'Intuition' is out and just went platinum officially. So I think to have the music doing what it's doing right now, man, it's the ultimate. Nobody is really selling records out there but we are at a million records and we dropped it at Christmas, so we are just trying to get that thing to like two million, you know.

I'm over the moon to be involved in the 'Doctor Who' Christmas special. I can't quite believe it as it's a part of the family tradition at the Jenkins household. I heard the news that I got the role on my 30th birthday and it was the best birthday present ever.

I'm so depressed. Christmas is the worst of all. Holidays are terrible, worse than Sundays. I get melancholia.

Lately I did a film called All I Want for Christmas and it was well received. This gave me a new point of view and a new respect for my work as an actress.

I think the people who are making Christmas-themed movies today feel that people are more cynical about Christmas. There's more of an edge.

I was at the vice president's Christmas party. I thought that his speech was spectacular, and I knew that it was a very emotional and difficult thing for him to do, but I admonished him for not waiting just one more stinking day.

When I was five my parents bought me a ukulele for Christmas. I quickly learned how to play it with my father's guidance. Thereafter, my father regularly taught me all the good old fashioned songs.

In fact, I was one of the few trusted people that Lucy allowed to play with their kids. I spent time at their summer home, rode horses at their ranch, and swam at their beach house. I even spent a Christmas with them at Palm Springs one year.

It will be a hard game if you think about winning a championship. We need to think about our own game at the moment and focus on getting good results especially over the Christmas period.

I grew up with the classics. My mom and I would sit and watch 'Singin' in the Rain' and 'White Christmas' - those kind of movies.

Well, because I have twin seven-year-old boys, I enjoy the gift giving stuff a great deal. We do both Hanukkah and Christmas, so it is a costly, though extremely pleasing proposition.

For a long time all I wanted for Christmas were books about outdoor survival. I was convinced that the woods were calling me. I camped a lot, I took classes. At 18, I told myself if I don't live in the woods by myself by the time I'm 25, I have failed.

It was, you know, probably 80 degrees out in L.A., and my dad took me outside and there was snow. At the time, I thought, 'Every kid doesn't have snow in their backyard on Christmas?'

You have to remind kids to stay connected to the meaning of Christmas. Sometimes it takes a little bit of effort, but it's so worth it.

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.

'The Christmas Song,' by Nat King Cole, is not only a masterful performance; to me it just sounds like the holidays. I've never sung it, because Nat's version is so perfect. I gotta leave it alone.

When I was eight years old, I got a dummy for Christmas and started teaching myself. I got books and records and sat in front of the bathroom mirror, practising. I did my first show in the third grade and just kept going; there was no reason to quit.

May I share with you my earliest memory of a political row? It was with my mother, about the Queen - classic Freudian stuff, shrinks would say. I was eight, and refusing to watch the Queen's Christmas Day broadcast.

Tax cuts should be for life, not just for Christmas.

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.

I love all things Christmas.

A friend gave me a CD of the 'Pathetique' Symphony as a Christmas present. I went home, and I put on the CD expecting to listen to Tchaikovsky. But it started 'ta ta ta taaa.' It was too long for me. I didn't understand it at first, but then I fell in love, in love, in love.

I beg people not to accept the seasonal ritual of well-timed charity on Christmas Eve. It's blasphemy.

I love Christmas. Frosty the Snowman, peace on Earth and mangers, Salvation Army bell ringers and reindeer, the movie 'Meet Me in St. Louis,' office parties and cookies.

Christmas gives us the opportunity to pause and reflect on the important things around us - a time when we can look back on the year that has passed and prepare for the year ahead.

Like my dad, I have a Christmas party most years. I like to celebrate and see as many people as possible.

It's fun when you start a movie, because it's kind of like you get to go Christmas shopping... you get to make your wish list and you start thinking about what each character needs.

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!

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.

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.

Yes, my first memory of singing, in general, was of a Christmas song. And then listening to Christmas music was really the first music I was ever connected to.