The Battle for Christmas

Readable, researched, and endlessly interesting, The Battle For Christmas is the best history of our modern holiday available. Nissenbaum writes with a clear voice, and presents a mountain of research flitered through a keen eye for culture. He debunks many of the myths surrounding the holiday, and shows where our modern traditions truly came from (mostly Victorian invention, not medieval tradition or Christian dogma). It's an interesting mix of invention, suppression, and substitution that really aimed to create a holiday for everyone (not just Christians) ... and has, as the years have passed, actually begun to fulfil that promise. This book quite literally changed the way I viewed Christmas. I appreciate the holiday and enjoy the season much more than I used to!

Stephen Nissenbaum shows us that there is no "real" Christmas to which we must return to be authentic. While some will find his demystification of our cherished traditions depressing, I found it liberating. Christmas has always been a malleable tradition, according to Nissenbaum. That means that while it may be an "invented tradition", it is one we are free to reinvent for ourselves. Many of us are concerned about the extreme materialism and consumerism that rules our societies and hijacks our family and community life. The Battle for Christmas provides a roadmap of where we have been, and suggests where we might go to recapture the magic of this seasonal festival.

Being born into a family of historians, I've heard plenty of discussion about a certain paradox concerning books published in the field. Many historians, including some who are quite intelligent and qualified, lack the talent for writing readable prose, so their works frequently prove inaccessible to a wider audience. On the other hand, many of the most popular and widely read history books are not, by traditional standards, 'good' history books based on solid research. Stephen Nissenbaum's "The Battle for Christmas" manages to bridge the gap by presenting solid historical research in an easy to understand way.Roughly, the book covers how the Christmas holiday was experienced by ordinary people in the United States, mostly focusing on the nineteenth century. After an introductory chapter covering the Puritans' somewhat surprising attitude towards the holiday, we get chapters that look individually at various different traditions, such as gift giving, and at various regions of the country. Nissenbaum's major thesis is that our concept of a traditional family Christmas was actually invented around the 1820's, an action that corresponds with the rise of the middle class. He backs this up with a fearsome array of evidence, including personal letters, newspaper articles, and advertisements. However, the text is not merely a recitation of facts and data. Nissenbaum organizes it into a type of narrative, letting us clearly see the progression through time as people's attitudes towards Christmas changed. In addition, he provides detailed portraits of some individuals who played key roles in defining a new type of Christmas, thus making it easier to understand how social trends actually affected people's lives. After reading "The Battle for Christmas", you'll feel like you know people such as Clement Clarke Moore, the author of "A Visit from St. Nicholas".

This is an intriguing book which shows how deeply many of our Christmas traditions are rooted in social anxiety. In particular, Nissenbaum successfully argues that Christmas in America has always been infused with a pragmatic spirit of paternalism, and he explores several different guises this cultural tendency has taken. In making his point, Nissenbaum concomitantly shatters the pervasive myth that rampant consumerism at Christmas is a post-war phenomenon. The author is a wonderful scholar, and he is a master at gleaning telling details from the great mass of sources he has consulted. I am a student of literature, and Nissenbaum's study broadened my own perspective on how Christmas is portrayed in nineteenth century fiction. Many things I always found confusing in literary depictions of Christmas now make much more sense. I read this book while I was finishing my dissertation (in a completely unrelated area), and I found Nissenbaum's writing itself to be a real inspiration. This is what scholarly writing should be: lucid, to-the-point, substantial, and engaging. Nissenbaum's style is flexible and approachable, his scholarship impeccable. That's a rare combination! I definitely want to read other of Nissenbaum's works.

How many of us feel guilty each year as the holiday season approaches, feeling that we are not celebrating the holidays with the spiritual ferver and simplicity of our ancestors? Well, it turns out that our ancestors, at least until the 19th century, were probably getting drunk, partying, and possibly taking in a bit of "chambering" (an old euphamism for fornication) during the Xmas season. This is a fascinating book that shows through solid data that our preconceived ideas of what Xmas used to be are largely incorrect. Cotton and Increase Mather both preached against the celebration of Christmas from the pulpit because the celebrations at the Xmas season in their lifetimes were seen to be so immoral as to be unfit for Christians. I found this book to be so interesting and pertinent that I spent a hour in a church class explaining its contents to my fellow churchgoers. I highly recommend this book for any curious and thoughtful person and bet it will liberate you from guilt and stress based on incorrect perceptions of Xmases past.