"Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling"
About this Quote
The subtext is both tender and suspicious. Tender, because it argues for consolation beyond circumstance: you don’t need perfect weather, perfect family, or perfect spending power to access what the holiday promises. Suspicious, because it recognizes how quickly ritual can become obligation. If Christmas is only a season, you can miss it, fail it, get judged for not decorating correctly or not wanting to go home. If it’s a feeling, you can define it - and also admit when it isn’t there.
Context matters: Ferber wrote in an America being rapidly modernized, commercialized, and reshaped by mass media, with “Christmas” increasingly packaged as an event to be bought and displayed. Her phrasing resists that drift without turning preachy. It’s a novelist’s move: a line built for character psychology. It doesn’t redeem the holiday by moralizing; it redeems it by relocating it, from storefront spectacle to private meaning.
Quote Details
| Topic | Christmas |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: Roast Beef, Medium (Edna Ferber, 1913)
Evidence:
“Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling. And I haven't got it.” (Chapter VIII: "Catching Up With Christmas" (page number varies by edition)). This wording appears as dialogue spoken by the character Emma McChesney in Chapter VIII (“Catching Up With Christmas”) of Edna Ferber’s book "Roast Beef, Medium: The Business Adventures of Emma McChesney." Later in the same scene the line is echoed/varied as: “Christmas isn't a season, Mr. Buck. It's a feeling; and, thank God, I've got it!” The book’s original publication data (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1913) is corroborated by the Internet Archive scan metadata hosted via Wikimedia Commons. |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Ferber, Edna. (2026, February 10). Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/christmas-isnt-a-season-its-a-feeling-52907/
Chicago Style
Ferber, Edna. "Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling." FixQuotes. February 10, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/christmas-isnt-a-season-its-a-feeling-52907/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling." FixQuotes, 10 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/christmas-isnt-a-season-its-a-feeling-52907/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.






