The Battle for Christmas

Name: The Battle for Christmas
Brand: Vintage
SKU: 9780679740384-PRUSDTR-US
Price: 125.0 HKD
Availability: InStock

A Cultural History of America's Most Cherished Holiday

Stephen Nissenbaum (Author) ... more

Edition: US - Paperback / softback

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English • Age Adult - Adult

400 pages • 5.2 x 8.0 x 0.9 in

Approx. weight: 0.71 lb

Publication date: 28 Oct,1997

Barcode: 9780679740384 • Vintage

More books in English for Age Adult - Adult

History of the Americas
Religious Festivals
Social and cultural history

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By: Stephen Nissenbaum

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • Drawing on a wealth of research, this "fascinating" book (The New York Times Book Review) charts the invention of our current Yuletide traditions, from St. Nicholas to the Christmas tree and, perhaps most radically, the practice of giving gifts to children.

Anyone who laments the excesses of Christmas might consider the Puritans of colonial Massachusetts: they simply outlawed the holiday. The Puritans had their reasons, since Christmas was once an occasion for drunkenness and riot, when poor "wassailers extorted food and drink from the well-to-do. In this intriguing and innovative work of social history, Stephen Nissenbaum rediscovers Christmas's carnival origins and shows how it was transformed, during the nineteenth century, into a festival of domesticity and consumerism.

Bursting with detail, filled with subversive readings of such seasonal classics as "A Visit from St. Nicholas” and A Christmas Carol, The Battle for Christmas captures the glorious strangeness of the past even as it helps us better understand our present.