Christmas – A Candid History

I purchased this book about a year or so ago. Started it, put it aside, then picked it up again this year. Still haven’t finished it, but I’m interested in the book. If you’ve talked to me, you’ll know I’m a fiction gal, and I read non-fiction sparingly. When I get a non-fiction title, even if it’s a subject matter that I’m interested in, I usually don’t finish reading the book. It’s just the way that I’m wired. But, I think I’ll finish this one eventually. This book gives a great background about the history of Christmas, going back to the days BEFORE Christ. People used to celebrate winter holidays, bringing greenery and lights into their home to make them festive during the cold, dreary, winter months. Also, this was also the season to worship pagan gods, and to get the pagan-god worshippers to convert to Christianity, Christians realized that pagans couldn’t give up all of their customs or they’d be miserable. Thus, the day of Christmas was born, the day we celebrate Jesus’s birth, complete with greenery and lights. The December 25th date was chosen because that was the celebration date of a sun god – so that date was adopted as the celebratory day of Christ’s birth.

Interesting reading that I’d recommend during this holiday season. Also, I wanted to point out that the history of Christmas has always been an interest of mine. I’m not sure if it stems from the fact that my family never really celebrated Christmas in the traditional sense. I recall going to the library, when I was still in my early twenties, searching for books about Saint Nicolas, wondering how he became so prominent as Santa Claus during our holiday festivities. I recall only finding one old, worn, dog-eared book in the library and it was short, giving a brief history of Saint Nicolas’s life and gave no indication about how he became Santa Claus. I remember when I tried to research the customs myself, I came up empty. Now, I’m able to find lots of books about the subject! Maybe my research skills weren’t as sharp back then, or, maybe such books just didn’t exist back in the early nineties?

Another book that came around that helped me find out more about the history of Christmas was Battle For Christmas. Although this book was good, it was a bit scholarly for me, but it was a wealth of information!

Do you have any favorite books about the history of Christmas? If so, let me know the titles!

~Cecelia Dowdy~
From Publishers Weekly
In this brief sketch of the history of Christmas celebrations and traditions, Forbes draws heavily on previous scholarship by the likes of Stephen Nissenbaum (The Battle for Christmas) and Leigh Schmidt (Consumer Rites), offering an overview that is informed yet concise. Forbes opens by rehearsing biblical scholars’ debates about Jesus’ birth, showing how little we can glean from the New Testament, then moves into discussions of winter festivals in early church history and the Roman Empire. The more compelling chapters are the latter ones on Christmas in America, discussing its surprising rise to prominence in the mid-19th century. Although this is a secondary work, Forbes does add some tidbits to the debates; for example, he pinpoints cartoonist Thomas Nast as primarily responsible for the mythology of Santa’s elf-ridden workshop in a far-off North Pole. Small historical errors mar the text, as when Forbes fails to distinguish between Puritans and Pilgrims, or credits British activist William Wilberforce with the Victorian moral revival, when Wilberforce died before Victoria’s accession. However, the book is valuable for its well-proven insistence that Christmas has always been as much a social and commercial festival as a religious one, debunking naïve assumptions that it used to be a purely spiritual holiday in a bygone halcyon age. (Oct.)
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