Product Description

What is your attitude toward the holiday season?

Do you have the “Christmas Spirit”? Do you refuse to observe such “pagan celebrations”? Or do you just say, “Bah, Humbug!”?

Rosemary St. Nichols is a single mother (and a “Recovering Catholic”) who has just moved to River City with her son Jonathan. Here, she meets Teniqua Johnson and her son Mychal, who celebrate Kwanzaa rather than Christmas. After a Nativity Scene placed outside City Hall causes controversy in the community, Rosemary wonders, “If even churches can’t agree to cooperate, how in the world will all the people in River City ever learn to put aside our differences—if even for one day?”

There are no angelic visitations or “Christmas miracles” here, but the residents of Riverside Apartments receive a lesson in cooperation, not to mention living together in harmony and mutual respect.

Learn more about your own holiday traditions, and those of others—as well as about those who don’t celebrate the season at all—in this moving journey of discovery and rediscovery of what the holiday season is all about.

(Readers of the author’s earlier novel Tattered Pilgrims will be pleased to see the reappearance of several of its characters in this book.)

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1714450 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 258 pages

About the Author
Steve Propp lives and works in downtown Sacramento, California, and graduated from CSU Sacramento. He has also written the novels Josué: Prisoner At Shalem (2005), Utopia On the 6th Floor (2004), Beyond Heaven and Earth (2003), Tattered Pilgrims (2001), and Work, Death, & Taxes (2000). He welcomes E-mail from readers: stevenhpropp@hotmail.com

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Customer Reviews

A warm story of bringing others together despite their differences
Not only a warm story about real people sharing their traditions, but an education in the differences and the similarities between beliefs. Steve shows us that even those with very diverse backgrounds can live harmoniously and even become dear friends. It was a story of those who have little wealth, but share tremendously what they have. Showing that respecting the views of others is what's important. Five stars was not enough.

A Multicultural Christmas
I own and have read this book. Steve has a nice way of expessing the multicltural differnces in how one addresses their way of sharing their experiences of dealing with the whole theme and concept of a Christmas spirit. The merge of multicultures was rewarding.

A Christmas and Holiday Experience for Everyone
Fans of Steven Propp's novels have much to celebrate in his new release, Multicultural Christmas. This novel offers something for everyone, no matter what your religious or cultural background may be. Multicutural Christmas embraces and reconciles just about every Holiday tradition imaginable, including those of Christians of all types (e.g. Catholic, Protestant, Jehovah's witnesses, Mormon), Jewish, pagan, Buddhist, African, Moslem, even Sikh. What could be dry, abstract concepts instead become fascinatingly alive by characters who espouse these diverse perspectives and celebrations. Propp accomplishes this seemingly impossible task within the central framework of a single mom, Rosemary St Nichols, who unintentionally sparks a Holiday/Christmas renaissance in the very multicultural River City apartment complex. Through Rosemary's experiences, the reader grows quickly in knowledge and wisdom of how a diverse community can live in harmony and enlightment. For example, the characters ingeniously resolve a conflict about a manger exhibit in front of City Hall. The story is also for readers of all ages, because much of the action and dialogue centers on Rosemary's son Jonathon as well as Mychal, the son of an African-American single mom. Propp fearlessly explores all the emotions, joys and turmoil we experience in our all too often dyfunctional modern families. Yet, in the end, there is surprising redemption and reconciliation in how these seemingly dysfunctional families and individuals function supremely well with harmony and understanding. This visionary novel will provide you with blessings, humor and an abiding hope of peace for the Holiday/Christmas season that will last you all year long. Like all Propp's novels, not only do you enjoy an exciting, absorbing story, you also are entertained on an educational level as you learn about many different cultural traditions at the Holidays. In our increasingly multicultural society, Steven Propp has given us a very timely vision of how these traditions can coexist peacefully. We do need the happy message of hope that this novel paints on its bright, humorous multicultural canvas, lightening the load of our busy, cynical world. It's a must read for anyone interested in Christmas/Holiday traditions - and who isn't? As an added bonus, readers of Propp's earlier novel, Tattered Pilgrims, will be pleased to see the reappearance of many characters. I'm a better person for having read this wholesome novel, and I highly recommend it to everyone.