-LSB- Illustration : `` A Merry Christmas , uncle ! God save you ! '' cried a cheerful voice . -RSB- `` What else can I be , '' returned the uncle , `` when I live in such a world of fools as this ? Merry Christmas ! Out upon merry Christmas ! What 's Christmas-time to you but a time for paying bills without money ; a time for finding yourself a year older , and not an hour richer ; a time for balancing your books , and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you ? If I could work my will , '' said Scrooge indignantly , `` every idiot who goes about with ` Merry Christmas ' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding , and buried with a stake of holly through his heart . He should ! '' `` Uncle ! '' pleaded the nephew . `` Nephew ! '' returned the uncle sternly , `` keep Christmas in your own way , and let me keep it in mine . '' `` Keep it ! '' repeated Scrooge 's nephew . `` But you do n't keep it . '' `` Let me leave it alone , then , '' said Scrooge . `` Much good may it do you ! Much good it has ever done you ! '' `` There are many things from which I might have derived good , by which I have not profited , I dare say , '' returned the nephew ; `` Christmas among the rest .
But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas-time , when it has come round -- apart XXXXX 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 .
If among by from holly hour in pudding to year