Merry Christmas!: Celebrating America's Greatest Holiday - Softcover

Marling, Karal Ann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674006798 ISBN 13: 9780674006799

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2001

Synopsis

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 book. 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.

About this title

Review:

This book is a thoroughly engaging and eye-opening tale of how a religious celebration came to be secularized and, more important, nationalized in the United States. Discerning in her choice of examples, gymnastic in her leaps from subject to subject, Marling here demonstrates again her fine interdisciplinary skills. Moreover, she does so in a style mercifully free of cant and academic jargon. Marling has filled the Christmas stocking with a winning combination of detail and interpretation, and has made the season merrier for it.--Charles C. Eldredge, author of Georgia O'Keeffe and former director of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

What makes this book valuable for historians, whether or not they have a special interest in Christmas, is that the analysis of Christmas is unfailingly put into the broad context of social mores that have defined American popular life, most notably the roles of women and children--topics either neglected in historical analysis or segregated from traditional history. Christmas is the biggest of American holidays; and, therefore, to understand its meaning is to understand significant aspects of America's character at home as well as in the marketplace. Marling's analysis of material things is particularly strong because it focuses so rigorously on connotation and significance, thus making the point that material culture is a reflection of prevailing political, social, and spiritual values.--Michael Stern, coauthor of Roadfood, Goodfood and Elvis World

Marling...[is] a keen-eyed critic of American popular culture...Merry Christmas! is an inspired idea of the sort that academics seldom have: consider the obvious, because no one else has, and treat it with respect. Marling's chapter topics read like a classic 'What to Do for Christmas' list--the tree, Santa, wrapping paper, shopping, cards and gifts, cookies and decorations. She also throws in movies, music and advertising. Showing the zeal of an archaeologist, Marling has dug through magazines and newspapers, photograph files, shoeboxes full of old cards, records of department-store windows and parades, and every possible kind of ephemera. The result is a collection of unrecorded histories, the visual and material culture of the American Christmas holiday...Combining imagination with solid historical grounding, Marling's analysis is both erudite and delightful...For all her scholarship and research, Marling is still tuned directly into [our] primary needs to right the wrongs of Christmas Past. She understands our national effort to keep trying to get it right next time...Reading her intelligent and entertaining book just might be a way to get through that familiar mixture of joy and dread that hits...when the Santas and the holly berries first appear in our land.-- (12/03/2000)

Like a parent faced with a holiday toy in 100 pieces and a sheet of instructions in faulty English, Karal Ann Marling, in Merry Christmas! Celebrating America's Greatest Holiday, has deconstructed the holiday and reassembled it in interesting and unexpected ways...[It] is a book full of surprises...By cleverly taking apart and analyzing our modern holiday customs, Marling tells us a lot about who we are.-- (12/17/2000)

Cultural historian Karal Ann Marling traces the history of our modern Christmas in the zestful, often endearingly gabby Merry Christmas! It is, like the holiday itself, a story of American families and business, stuffed like a red stocking with glittery details, vivid episodes, and eccentric side-trips.--Scott Alarik"Boston Globe" (12/24/2000)

According to Karal Ann Marling, 'Christmas is the universal memory' for contemporary Americans (whether they're Christian or not), an event in which 'virtually everybody has played a part.' By telling the story of Americans' celebration of Christmas, she promises to uncover a surprisingly neglected piece of not only our national past, but our collective wishes and psyche...Marling has a keen eye for offbeat topics, arresting detail and original interpretation...Her goal is to unwrap the hidden meaning of quotidian, but telling, objects and practices to reveal the holiday's deeper significance.-- (12/25/2000)

In nine chapters, Marling dissects the holiday, its history, meanings and practices ranging from wrapping paper to the rampant mythology of merrie olde Englyshe celebrations (Victorian, actually), window shopping, The Tree and the enduring allure of a 'White Christmas.' Her postscript is 'A Meditation on Christmas Cookies'...[Merry Christmas!] is lively reading and apt to chase the holiday blues.-- (11/26/2000)

[Marling] is an extremely adept cultural critic who dives below the wrapping paper and blinking lights to examine America's central, overwhelming holiday...Viewing Christmas mainly through the media of mass culture, Marling examines engravings, news photos, fiction, and greeting cards and paints a compelling portrait of how Christmas has been presented and shared. She shows that although the holiday is often associated with material gain, often there's genuine goodwill, warmth, and familial tenderness behind the glitzy trappings...No Scrooge herself, the author is usually cheery and loving in her discussions, balancing articulation and intelligence with a wry, casual tone that would make her a wonderful head of the table at any Christmas dinner.-- (12/01/2000)

For those interested in the evolution of Christmas and its traditions over the past two centuries, Merry Christmas! by Karal Ann Marling is an absolute must. With excruciating attention to detail and impeccable research, this book covers a broad survey of what makes Christmas the 'universal memory.' Yet this is not some academic treatise. It is readable, engrossing and literate--high praise for any book...Marling thematically develops her subject and does it justice...Take a breather, absorb the extent of Marling's treatment and go bake some cookies.-- (12/17/2000)

Author Karal Ann Marling describes the provenance and significance of 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 engravings and lithographs, magazine fiction, pictorial ads, news photos, cards and movies, Marling describes how the 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 holly 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.--Earl W. Count "Omaha World-Herald "

About the Author:

Karal Ann Marling is Professor of Art History at the University of Minnesota.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0674006798
• ISBN 13: 9780674006799
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464