Every year in the mailing advertising the society's annual Christmas Party, Frank sends along "A Chesterton Advent Calendar", a sheet containing excerpts from Chesterton's writings — a mix of prose and poetry — one for each of the ten days leading up to Christmas, and for Christmas Day itself. Some of the quotations are directly related to Christmas; others not so much.
Why, you may ask, doesn't he include a Chesterton quotation for each day of Advent?
Beats me. That's just the kind of sui generis fellow Frank is.
Throughout this week, I'll be including these quotations herein, with references whenever possible.
15 December
Here am I, Father Christmas; well you know it,
Though critics say it fades, my Christmas Tree,
Yet was it Dickens who became my poet
And who the Dickens may the critics be?
16 December
Comfort, especially this vision of Christmas comfort, is the reverse of a gross or material thing. It is far more poetical, properly speaking, than the Garden of Epicurus. It is far more artistic than the Palace of Art. It is more artistic because it is based upon a contrast, a contrast between the fire and wine within the house and the winter and the roaring rains without. It is far more poetical, because there is in it a note of defence, almost of war; a note of being besieged by the snow and hail; of making merry in the belly of a fort. —Charles Dickens
17 December
Damn it, I sometimes think the only English thing left in England is cherry brandy. —The Quick One
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