I do like Christmas on the whole.... In its clumsy way, it does approach Peace and Goodwill. But it is clumsier every year.

Forster’s remark balances affection for Christmas’s humane ideal with impatience at its execution. He grants the holiday a genuine moral aspiration—“Peace and Goodwill”—yet stresses how awkwardly society realizes it, through forced cheer, ritualized consumption, and social obligation. The final sentence (“clumsier every year”) suggests a modern drift: as the holiday becomes more commercialized and performative, its gestures toward reconciliation and kindness feel less natural and more encumbered. The tone is wry rather than cynical; the speaker still “likes” Christmas, but mourns the growing mismatch between its ethical promise and the increasingly cumbersome cultural machinery built around it.