I had eight brothers and sisters. Every Christmas my younger brother Bobby would wake up extra early and open everybody's presents - everybody's - so by the time the rest of us got up all the gifts were shredded ribbons off torn open and thrown aside.

It's hard and sometimes it's scary. It still amazes my mother. I went home for Christmas one year and there were fans all over the front lawn hoping to see me.

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.

I actually share her view and understand her frustration when any government attempts to ban secular symbols like Santa Claus or Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer or Christmas lights.

My Christmas wish would be to have an entire week off. To spend it with my family and just curl up and watch Christmas movies when it's snowing outside.

Whatever he does should be seen as working at the Presidency and if he goes to Colorado for Christmas it should be for a minimum amount of time the family tradition and family get-together aspect emphasized and it be seen as a working vacation.

I think we felt the pressure more at first than this time around. But still you don't want to let anyone down. I never even met Patrick until we had a Christmas party at Ian McKellen's house on the first movie and then I didn't see him again until the premiere.

My favorite toy growing up was Polly Pocket. But one gift that I wanted though never received for Christmas was a pair of trampoline moon shoes. You strap them to your feet and they have springs on them and you can just jump around!

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

The best Christmas present I got from my husband was a week to do whatever I wanted.

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

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.

I'm going to take the kids away over Christmas but I don't I've written 14 musicals now I don't want to rush into doing something just for the sake of doing it. I want to do it when I find a story.

My mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer shortly before three P.M. on Christmas Day of 2008. I don't know the exact time of her death because none of us thought to look at a clock for a while after she stopped breathing.

My fondest memories are generally the day after Thanksgiving. I get the total decorating Christmas itch.

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.

We never really had any kind of a Christmas. This is one part where my memory fails me completely.

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.