2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Summary Of Christmas Traditions, November 7, 2010
"Merry Christmas Everywhere!" by Arlene Erlbach and Herb Erlbach.
Illustrated by Sharon Lane Holm. The Millbrook Press, Brookfield CT. 2002
This is an 8.5 x 11 inches multi-colored book that lists Christmas traditions by country in alphabetically order. There are 20 different nations considered, ranging from Australia to Serbia. Interestingly, the United States is not explicitly listed. The Christmas traditions of each nation are addressed on two side-by-side pages. The individual format is to first present the usual Christmas greeting in the official language of that nation, then to tell the reader what the nation's official language is and, finally, the fun begins. The remainder of the two pages describes the different ways that nation celebrates Christmas and the pages present a different Christmas project.
As an example, Australians bake a chocolate frosted cake called "Lamingtons"; pieces of this cake, along with a glass of lemonade, are left out for Santa. Australians prefer to sing about "...a kookaburra in a gum tree" rather than a "...partridge in a pear tree".!!
The second page for each nation presents a traditional Christmas project. With Ghana, the project consists of cutting strips of crepe paper streamers into a garland to wrap around the Christmas tree. In Japan, gold wrapping paper is cut to form fans, which again are hung from your Christmas tree. Some of the projects deal with making a food treat, which is traditional for Christmas. Australia, Canada, France and Serbia all show traditional recipes.
The traditional Christmas greeting is presented for each of the 20 nations. The authors have chosen to translate those greetings more or less literally: for example, "Feliz Navidad" becomes " Happy Nativity", but the German "Frõhliche Weihnachten" really is not "Merry Christmas". Close enough, I guess. I was surprised that they left out the Irish "Nollaig Shona Duit" and the Irish tradition of lighting a candle in the window of the house. The lighted candle says that if there is no room for Mary in the Inn, there is room for her and child in this house.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
fun book, December 23, 2009
I really enjoyed this book, it was full of great, easy projects to do in my first grade classroom. We learned a lot about how other countries celebrate Christmas. I would recommend this book.
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