Merry Christmas! : celebrating America's greatest holiday / Karal Ann Marling.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Marling, Karal Ann.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Christmas--United States--History.

Christmas.

Christmas decorations--United States--History.

Christmas decorations.

United States--Social life and customs.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 442 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2000.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

It wouldn't be Christmas without the "things." How they came to mean so much, and to play such a prominent role in America's central holiday, is the tale told in this delightful and edifying book. In a style characteristically engaging and erudite, Karal Ann Marling, one of our most trenchant observers of American culture, describes the outsize spectacle that Christmas has become, showing us the provenance and significance of each of its essential parts: the decorated trees and holiday lights, the cards and gifts and wrapping papers, the toy villages and store displays and Macy's holiday parade, Bing Crosby and Santa Claus. Viewing Christmas through the media of mass culture--engravings and lithographs, magazine fiction, pictorial ads, news photos, cards, and movies--Marling tells us how the beloved Christmas tree grew out of a much-reprinted image of Queen Victoria and her family gathered around a decorated fir; how Santa Claus lost his provincial Dutch character and turned into the jolly old soul we know; how Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol borrowed from Washington Irving's imaginings of what Christmas must have been like in Merrie Olde England; and how the holiday, balancing between the private and public realms, conferred a central and defining role on women. A celebration of the visual culture of the season, Merry Christmas! offers captivating evidence that Christmas in America is primarily a secular celebration of abundance, goodwill, and familial identity, expressed in a multitude of material ways.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Preface

1 Wrapping Paper Unwrapped

2 The Christmas Business

3 Window Shopping

4 Olde Christmas

5 O Tannenbaum

6 Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town

7 Somebody Else’s Christmas

8 Thinking of You at Christmas

9 Dreaming of a White Christmas

Postscript

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674040625

0674040627

OCLC:

923111930