It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind. It was the Yuletide, and I had come at last to the ancient sea town where my people had dwelt and kept festival in the elder time when festival was forbidden; where also they had commanded their sons to keep festival once every century, that the memory of primal secrets might not be forgotten.
1923 October, H[oward] P[hillips] Lovecraft, “The Festival”, in Weird Tales, volume 5, number 1, Indianapolis, Ind.: Popular Fiction Pub. Co., published January 1925; reprinted in Lin Carter, editor, The Doom that Came to Sarnath, New York, N.Y.: Del Rey Books, Ballantine Books, February 1971 (May 1991 printing), page 95