Product Description

Written for everyone who loves and is simultaneously driven crazy by the holiday season, Christmas: A Candid History provides an enlightening, entertaining perspective on how the annual Yuletide celebration got to be what it is today. In a fascinating, concise tour through history, the book tells the story of Christmas--from its pre-Christian roots, through the birth of Jesus, to the holiday's spread across Europe into the Americas and beyond, and to its mind-boggling transformation through modern consumerism. Packed with intriguing stories, based on research into myriad sources, full of insights, the book explores the historical origins of traditions including Santa, the reindeer, gift giving, the Christmas tree, Christmas songs and movies, and more. The book also offers some provocative ideas for reclaiming the joy and meaning of this beloved, yet often frustrating, season amid the pressures of our fast-paced consumer culture.
DID YOU KNOW
For three centuries Christians did not celebrate Christmas?
Puritans in England and New England made Christmas observances illegal?
St. Nicholas is an elf in the famous poem "The Night Before Christmas"?
President Franklin Roosevelt changed the dateof Thanksgiving in order to lengthen the Christmas shopping season?
Coca-Cola helped fashion Santa Claus's look in an advertising campaign?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #527174 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 187 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780520251045
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
In this brief sketch of the history of Christmas celebrations and traditions, Forbes draws heavily on previous scholarship by the likes of Stephen Nissenbaum (The Battle for Christmas) and Leigh Schmidt (Consumer Rites), offering an overview that is informed yet concise. Forbes opens by rehearsing biblical scholars' debates about Jesus' birth, showing how little we can glean from the New Testament, then moves into discussions of winter festivals in early church history and the Roman Empire. The more compelling chapters are the latter ones on Christmas in America, discussing its surprising rise to prominence in the mid-19th century. Although this is a secondary work, Forbes does add some tidbits to the debates; for example, he pinpoints cartoonist Thomas Nast as primarily responsible for the mythology of Santa's elf-ridden workshop in a far-off North Pole. Small historical errors mar the text, as when Forbes fails to distinguish between Puritans and Pilgrims, or credits British activist William Wilberforce with the Victorian moral revival, when Wilberforce died before Victoria's accession. However, the book is valuable for its well-proven insistence that Christmas has always been as much a social and commercial festival as a religious one, debunking naïve assumptions that it used to be a purely spiritual holiday in a bygone halcyon age. (Oct.)
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From the Inside Flap
"This is a forthright, accessible, informative and interesting account of the evolution of Christmas customs and celebrations. Forbes's tone is direct, friendly, and open, and he serves as a companionable and trustworthy guide who candidly shares his knowledge and doubts, passions and worries, surprises and disappointments. Thoroughly engaging and studded with fascinating details, this book will reward any reader who picks it up. This book should be read and given at Christmas for many years to come."--Eugene V. Gallagher, Rosemary Park Professor of Religious Studies, Connecticut College

"This book offers an accessible, jargon-free, fast-paced, and reliable historical sketch of Christmas and its evolution from pre-Christian times to the present. Based on sound scholarship and written in a brisk, readable style, it is an excellent book for reference purposes, classroom use, and recreational reading. I might also add, it would make a great Christmas gift."--Dell deChant, author of Sacred Santa: Religious Dimensions of Consumer Culture

About the Author
Bruce David Forbes, Professor of Religious Studies at Morningside College, is coeditor, with Jeffrey Mahan of Religion and Popular Culture in America (UC Press) and coeditor, with Jeanne Halgren Kilde, of Rapture, Revelation, and the End Times: Exploring the Left Behind Series

Customer Reviews

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Christmas
Bruce David Forbes' CHRISTMAS: A CANDID HISTORY is a must read for anyone who loves the holiday season, or at least anyone who loves the religious aspect of the holiday season and enjoys the secular aspects as well. In this slim volume, Forbes looks at Christmas from its earliest incarnations to our present day celebrations. This is not a hackneyed presentation of common beliefs about Christmas. Forbes offers fresh perspectives about many commonly held theories about Christmas, especially what may be the three most common assumptions about Christmas, namely that it's a Christmas answer to winter solstice celebrations, that most of the symbols are pagan symbols with a Christian flair, and that Charles Dickens is responsible for Christmas as we know it today. For Forbes, Christmas is both all of the things and none of these things.

Forbes begins by looking at the variety of winter solstice celebrations since Christmas is a winter holiday then ventures into the religious aspects, reminding readers that Easter, not Christmas was the central Christian holiday and, for that matter is still supposed to be the central Christian celebration. He then ventures into looking at Christmas symbols such as the Christmas tree, the poinsettia, St. Nicholas becoming Santa Claus, Christmas in Victorian England and the United States, and Christmas as we know it today. Throughout the book Forbes uses the analogy of a snowball as a way of explaining Christmas. If someone wishes to make a snowman, it starts as a small ball of snow, gets rolled around and picks up all sorts of things along the way: dirt, twigs, rocks, dead leaves, etc. as well as snow. The result is the large snowball that becomes the base, torso, or head of the snowman. Much of how we now celebrate Christmas started the same way. A tradition started, different cultures, peoples and time periods added something to it, and today much of what we celebrate is a combination of a variety of additions and adaptations.

It turns out to be a fascinating read. As we read we learn that Christmas was never the purely spiritual holiday we sometimes imagine it to be and that there's always been a struggle to mingle the two, keeping the fun in the holiday while not forgetting it's central message--the birth of Jesus Christ.. We also see how Christmas went from a religious holiday with an excuse for reveling to the family centered holiday many now celebrate. We even get a critique of modern culture and consumerism as well as glimpses into the more recent "Happy Holiday/Merry Christmas" debates. While it's not specifically a "put Christ back into Christmas" book, Forbes as a practicing Methodist and religious studies professor appreciates the primacy spiritual aspect of the holiday while also loving the more secular aspects of Christmas, gives us a greater appreciation of Christmas. He offers his readers insights as to what the holiday ought to be about, and in a very real way rescues Christmas.

The Dickens You Say
This Christmas I am buying a dozen copies of this delightful little book to give friends who suffer holiday stress. In addition to providing clarification on the actual evolution of the holiday, it offers the excellent suggestion that the Twelve Days of Christmas (from December 25 until January 6) be the time for a peaceful religious celebration of Christmas. Forbes embraces both the commercial holiday and the religious celebration and encourages readers to style their holiday celebration to suit their own needs.

The only false historical note which sounded for me occurs on page 62 of the hardback edition when Forbes states that "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens fails to mention religion except for three words indicating that Scrooge went to church. That is simply incorrect.

In addition to the many instances of "God bless you" and "God save you" sprinkled throughout the story, there are specific references to Christ when Bob Cratchit recalls Tiny Tim hoping "the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk and blind men see."

And Marley's Ghost asks of Scrooge, "...Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men..."

And there are a number of other religious references to Christ's birth throughout Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."

I checked the notes to see whether or not Forbes had cited the Dickens work. He had indeed cited an annotated edition of "A Christmas Carol" edited by Michael Patrick Hearn. Forbes would do well to spend a little more time with Dickens this Christmas.

The book is still valuable for distilling an abundance of historical material into an easy and pleasant read to soothe the holidazed.

Brief, but good overview
This is a good and informative book. It becomes a little Christian-oriented in the final chapter, but otherwise, an educational summary of Christmas and all of its trappings - the history, the journey of Saint Nicholas to Santa Claus, the cultural touchstones, and the commercialization of the celebration in the twentieth century, with its attendant implications. Worth reading either as a light overview, or to bring together multiple strands of research.