“Christmas is the spirit of giving without a thought of getting. It is happiness because we see joy in people. It is forgetting self and finding time for others. It is discarding the meaningless and stressing the true values.”

American religious leader and author

Thomas Spencer Monson was an American religious leader and author, and the 16th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He lived from 1927 to 2018 and spent much of his life in church leadership and public service. He first worked as a manager at the Deseret News, a Utah newspaper owned by the LDS Church. Later, he became one of the central figures in his faith, serving as church president and, among believers, as a prophet, seer, and revelator.