Actually my mother and Alfie came for three weeks' Christmas vacation and stayed for 21 years. I guess my mother never went back because she was lonely.

My grandson sees me as Lois on TV every Christmas and that scores me points.

What I'm not saying is that all government spending is bad. It's not - far far from it but there is no free lunch as a former colleague of mine used to say. There is no public tooth fairy. Father Christmas does not work on the Treasury staff this year. You can never bail someone out of trouble without putting someone else into trouble.

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.

Christmas is a stocking stuffed with sugary goodness.

One Christmas my father kept our tree up till March. He hated to see it go. I loved that.

At Christmas our house is like a Donnie and Marie Christmas Special.

The denominational world tries to pressure its members to focus on the birth of Christ but in doing so layers of guilt are imposed and competition gets complicated as one Christmas program tries to outdo the other.

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.

It can't be overstated how wonderful it is not to have to audition any more. Any actor will tell you it's like Christmas.

I don't know of too many double Christmas albums so it is something that's new and hopefully will be fun and there's plenty of stuff out there to cut.

There's been a concerted effort to steal Christmas.

I get a little behind during Lent but it comes out even at Christmas.

Every singer eventually gets around to a Christmas disc.

There's something about a Christmas sweater that will always make me laugh.

I'm sure most of us remember being a kid and you have all of this endless time where two weeks before Christmas feels like ten years. I used to go to bed to try and go to sleep to try and make it go faster.

Christmas is the antithesis of Thanksgiving. Christmas is pretty much a man-made holiday.

I have a musical called Goodbye and Good Luck based on a Grace Paley short story. I also have King Island Christmas and there are 20 different productions of it this year.

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.

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!

I'm bad on Valentine's Day but even worse on Christmas. I go shopping at nine o'clock on December 24th every year. Nobody else is there. I'm in Toys'R'Us all by myself. I get there five minutes before closing.

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 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.

I save every Christmas card. I keep them all.