“Whites were bright as fresh-fallen snow, yellow shone like gold, reds turned to flame, but the shadows were so black they looked like holes in the world.”

“Cam stepped into the clearing. His eyes were rimmed with a thick, shimmering gold shadow, and it shone on his face in the moonlight, making him look like a wildcat.”

“What is the colour of Christmas?Red? The red of the toyshops on a dark winter’s afternoon,Of Father Christmas and the robin’s breast?Or green?Green of holly and spruce and mistletoe in the house, dark shadow of summer in leafless winter?One might plainly add a romance of white, fields of frost and snow;thus white, green, red- reducing the event to the level of a Chianti bottle. But many will say that the significant colour is gold, gold of fire and treasure, of light in the winter dark; and this gets closer, For the true colour of Christmas is Black.Black of winter, black of night, black of frost and of the east wind, black of dangerous shadows beyond the firelight.I am not sure who wrote this. I got it from page nine of “A Book of Christmas” by William Sansom. Google didn’t help. It is rather true I think, that the true color of Christmas is black. For like the author said in succeeding sentences “The table yellow with electric light, the fire by which stories are told, the bright spangle of the tree- they all blazé out of shadow and out of a darkness of winter”

“He looked around at the perfectly white world, felt the wet kisses of the snowflakes, pondered hidden meanings in the pale yellow streetlights that shone in a world so whitely asleep. "Beautiful," he whispered.”

“Some miles to the North, a ring of mountains rose out of the clouds. The peaks were clad in snow and ice, and together they looked like an ancient, jagged crown resting atop the layers of mist. The eastward-facing scarps shone brilliantly in the light of the morning sun, while long blue shadows cloaked the western sides and stretched dwindling into the distance, tenebrous daggers upon the billowy, snow-white plain.”

“Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold:Her skin was white as leprosy,The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold.”