I can understand people simply fleeing the mountainous effort Christmas has become... but there are always a few saving graces and finally they make up for all the bother and distress.

Sarton’s remark captures an ambivalence many feel toward modern Christmas: the holiday’s emotional and logistical demands can swell into a “mountainous effort,” prompting fantasies of escape. Yet she resists pure cynicism. The “saving graces” suggest small, genuine moments—kindness, beauty, intimacy, memory—that survive beneath commercial pressure and family strain. The sentence’s movement from “bother and distress” to a final balancing (“they make up for”) frames Christmas as a ritual worth enduring not because it is easy or consistently joyful, but because it can still yield concentrated instances of meaning. The quote thus defends imperfect celebration: value is found in brief authentic experiences rather than in flawless performance.