Christmas… A Kinder Word

Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea… on and on… until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the lookout in the bow, the  officers who had the watch; dark ghostly figures in their stations; but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companions of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad had had a kinder word for one another on that day than on any day in the year; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance and had known that they delighted to remember him.   -Charles Dickens- ‘A Christmas Carol’.