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The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America's Most Cherished Holiday Paperback – October 28, 1997
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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.
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateOctober 28, 1997
- Dimensions5.2 x 0.87 x 7.99 inches
- ISBN-100679740384
- ISBN-13978-0679740384
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Captivating...entertaining and erudite...challenges and demolishes a variety of cherished assumptions." —Newsday
"Christmas...too often fails to wholly satisfy the spirit or the senses. How and why the yuletide came to this is the subject of historian Stephen Nissenbaum's fascinating new study. " —Newsweek
From the Inside Flap
--The New York Times Book Review
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.
Drawing on a wealth of period documents and illustrations, Nissenbaum 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. Bursting with detail, filled with subversive read
From the Back Cover
--The New York Times Book Review
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.
Drawing on a wealth of period documents and illustrations, Nissenbaum 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. 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.
"Christmas . . . too often fails to wholly satisfy the spirit or the senses. How and why the yuletide came to this is the subject of historian Stephen Nissenbaum's fascinating new study."
--Newsweek
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Vintage (October 28, 1997)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0679740384
- ISBN-13 : 978-0679740384
- Item Weight : 11.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.2 x 0.87 x 7.99 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #429,363 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #236 in Christmas (Books)
- #345 in Customs & Traditions Social Sciences
- #1,238 in Women in History
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According to Professor Nissenbaum the Christmas that we love to hate today was born out of the ideas of a small group of men in New York City and London as a way of transforming Christmas from a rowdy working class street festival to what it has become. Further, Christmas wasn't much practiced at all in the United States until the late 19th century and was outright banned in many of the early colonies.
This look at how Christmas has changed and evolved is essential reading if you want to have a conversation with someone who rants and raves about their perceptions of people who don't celebrate Christmas the way that they want you to celebrate it. Understanding the history of this seminal holiday in the United States helps to understand how it has become what it is and how, above all else, Christmas is a commercial holiday that hasn't had much to do with religion for a long time. My advice to those who want to hit people over the head with the religious nature of Christmas ... celebrate it without the spending spree that was artificially tacked onto the holiday by the men that are described in this book.
Until I read this text, I had the misconception that the struggles between the Christmas Holiday and the Secular were rather recent. Was I suprised to find that these battles have been going on for centuries.
Mr. Nissenbaum has done phenomenol research into the various issues/struggles concerning the Christmas Holiday. Illustrations are well-chosen, and the extensive use of footnotes and documentation really show off his work.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, drinking, riots, and wild merry-making helped define the holiday, which is the main reason Puritans and others opposed the holiday. But by the 1820's, a class transformation had begun which would see Christmas become more family friendly and evolve into what we have today.
Nissenbaum goes into the darker aspects of Christmas as well. How slave-owners in the American South used Christmas to keep everyone in "festive" spirits is brought to light, and the pursuit of profit had its influence as well.
The book goes into more material than what I have briefly mentioned here. And it's well worth anyone's time.
I don't agree with all of Mr. Nissenbaum's conclusions myself, but I was suprised when I heard there were big debates about keeping stores open on Christmas (back in the 1820's) even than.
The More Times Change . . . .
JThree
Williston ND
In an attempt to tone down the violence, Washington Irving published the Knickerbocker History of New York, in which the narrator claimed to remember the peaceful and loving family celebrations of Old Dutch New York. Not many years later, Clement Moore wrote “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” which established a new image of Father Christmas as a jolly fat man who gave presents to children.
Nissenbaum provides careful research for each point he makes about the change in views about Christmas. I found the book a very interesting read.











