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schmieg330's review
informative
slow-paced
2.0
Interesting information, but it didn't have to be so long. Lots of evidence and information was just repeated to an amount that made an interesting book quite boring.
artk_bookworm's review
4.0
I really liked it, but I didn't agree with all his conclusions. But it was well written, and a fun academic read on my favorite Holiday!
ericwelch's review
4.0
Until the 19th century, Christmas celebrations had more to do with the midwinter pagan celebrations of the Saturn and Bacchus, according to a history of the Christmas celebration by Stephen Nissenbaum. The Christmas portrayed by Dickens of the family gathered together for a day of hard-earned rest and modest excess was a novelty. The holiday itself was only beginning to take shape as the dominating force between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.
Traditionally, December in Europe was a time for celebrating the end of the harvest season, when beer and wine were fully fermented. In fact, rowdy was the rule with massive feast-ing and cuckoldry. The Puritans suppressed the holiday. In Massachusetts there was a five shilling fine for celebrating Christmas. Pagan and consuetudinary celebrations die hard, and when the church decided in the fourth century to link the birth of Christ with a traditional holiday — there was no biblical reason for picking December 25th — it was essentially making a very political decision. “In return for insuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior's birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it always had been.” Despite Puritan animus, the holiday was making a rebound by the mid-19th century, but even as late as the 18th century Christmas “was not centered around the family or on children or giving presents.” It was the “religion of domesticity,” as Nissenbaum calls it, that swept through society in the early 19th century that marked the change. Indeed popular culture reinforces the historical fact. We don’t pine after a medieval Christmas, rather a Victorian one. And the iconography revolves around horse-drawn sleighs, gaslights, petticoats and dark furniture. The precipitate change came from cities, especially New York, where the traditional Christmas was taking children into the streets for rather unseemly activities. There was a push by propertied New Yorkers to move the celebration off the streets and into the homes. Soon St. Nicholas was imported and transformed into the ruddy, obese, hen-pecked icon of Thomas Nast. And the secular shopping spree was born.
Les Standisford's [b:The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits|3098796|The Man Who Invented Christmas How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits|Les Standiford|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1225394065s/3098796.jpg|3129951] argues that Dickens rescued and re-invented Christmas, a holiday that the Puritans abhorred and made illegal.
revised 5/8/09
Traditionally, December in Europe was a time for celebrating the end of the harvest season, when beer and wine were fully fermented. In fact, rowdy was the rule with massive feast-ing and cuckoldry. The Puritans suppressed the holiday. In Massachusetts there was a five shilling fine for celebrating Christmas. Pagan and consuetudinary celebrations die hard, and when the church decided in the fourth century to link the birth of Christ with a traditional holiday — there was no biblical reason for picking December 25th — it was essentially making a very political decision. “In return for insuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior's birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it always had been.” Despite Puritan animus, the holiday was making a rebound by the mid-19th century, but even as late as the 18th century Christmas “was not centered around the family or on children or giving presents.” It was the “religion of domesticity,” as Nissenbaum calls it, that swept through society in the early 19th century that marked the change. Indeed popular culture reinforces the historical fact. We don’t pine after a medieval Christmas, rather a Victorian one. And the iconography revolves around horse-drawn sleighs, gaslights, petticoats and dark furniture. The precipitate change came from cities, especially New York, where the traditional Christmas was taking children into the streets for rather unseemly activities. There was a push by propertied New Yorkers to move the celebration off the streets and into the homes. Soon St. Nicholas was imported and transformed into the ruddy, obese, hen-pecked icon of Thomas Nast. And the secular shopping spree was born.
Les Standisford's [b:The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits|3098796|The Man Who Invented Christmas How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits|Les Standiford|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1225394065s/3098796.jpg|3129951] argues that Dickens rescued and re-invented Christmas, a holiday that the Puritans abhorred and made illegal.
revised 5/8/09
limeade17's review
5.0
This is the most fun scholarly work I have ever read, and I like to skim a bit of it every Christmas to get me in the spirit :)
hilaritas's review
5.0
This is an interesting cultural history of Christmas that largely argues that the domestic and commercial aspects we now associate with the holiday emerged simultaneously and synergistically. It's charmingly written with lots of arch asides, often translating the primary sources he quotes into modern slang (usually unnecessarily but amusingly). Each chapter picks up a different symbol or element of the Christmas mythos and traces its sources and evolutions into what we now think of as the "timeless" traditions of Christmas. My only real complaint is some occasional repetitiveness and that the last chapter went on a little longer than necessary. An extremely enlightening and fascinating history book and highly recommended. Would get 5 stars just for introducing me to the term "Belsnickle".
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