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The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America's Most Cherished Holiday Paperback – October 28, 1997

4.4 out of 5 stars 279

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PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • Drawing on a wealth of research, this "fascinating" book (The New York Times Book Review) 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. 

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.  

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Fascinating." —The New York Times Book 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

ating."

--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

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
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 279

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Stephen Nissenbaum
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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
279 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2024
It's hard to find academic histories that read as well as these. The author is both a good researcher and an excellent writer. If you'd like to get to know the origins of American Christmas traditions, this is a great source.
Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2012
I used to read "A Christmas Carol" every year as a tradition and now I have added this to my annual read list. This book gives the history of Christmas and explains how many of the traditions that we consider to be timeless and carried over to the US from "the old country" were carefully crafted and introduced a mere 100-150 years ago by wealth businessmen in New York who wanted to transform the raucous street fair that was Christmas (more like Mardi Gras) into a more peaceful time to focus on family and children ... throw in Thomas Nast and the advertising industry and you have the birth of the modern Christmas season that is so often the rant of the day on Fox News during this time of year.

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.
27 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2006
People often say that it is sad that Christmas is more about Santa Claus than Christianity. This book, however, shows that Christmas as we know it has always been about Santa and that before Santa Christmas was so horrible that Christians preferred not to celebrate it at all. Amazingly our Christmas tradition is based on the "Night Before Christmas" poem first published in a New York newspaper in 1823 and this tradition had taken its current form with all of its commercialism by 1830. Nissenbaum is to be commended for digging out this history and showing what the problems with Christmas were over a number of centuries and especially in the colonia American period and how the author of the poem altered and shaped other sources, particularly contributions by Washinton Irving, to alter social behavior around this holiday. The book also discusses the coming of the Christmas tree, the place of Dickens in our Christmas myths, and the role of the Christmas tradition in Black history. The book may need to be revised, however, since there seems to be some controversy about who the author of "The Night Before Christmas" really was. Other more recent books now seem to be available on this piece of history, but this book is the original research on the subject.
22 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2024
Very well written. Needs larger writing for older people.
Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2014
Wonderful 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
18 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2021
Lots of fun learning about early Christmas traditions and how they became established in the U.S. Too many long winded pedantic passages about education techniques for example that bogged my reading down.
3 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2018
The Battle for Christmas, by Stephen Nissenbaum, is a fascinating study of opposing views of the Christmas celebration in America. When immigrants brought their Christmas rituals from northern and southern Europe, the customs were not always welcome. Puritans dismissed Christmas as a pagan celebration masquerading as a Christian feast. Some celebrations, particularly those related to Saturnalia and the Yule feast, were rowdy affairs. Drunken gangs demanded food and drink from rich residents, a practice that was later tamed into “Wassailing.”
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.
18 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

SAN B
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 30, 2015
Intriguing insight into how Christmas developed. Wish I knew more about the author