The Battle for Christmas (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

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Characters/People edit see section history

• Washington Irving: Add a description of this character.
• John Pintard
• Clement Clarke Moore
• Charles Dickens
• Catharine Sedgwick
• Louisa May Alcott
• Charles Loring Brace
• Harriet Martineau
• Charles Follen
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Amos Bronson Alcott
• Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

Quotes edit see section history

• “We tour the Third World, or untouched pockets of our own society, and we do not choose to suspect that the natives already know all about us and just what we expect them to be like (or to recognize that it is our own culture that is selling them to us as just another commodity). We read about times gone by and we do not wish to think those were just as complex, and as morally ambiguous, as our own times. But of course they were. Someone expressed this idea with great elegance by pointing out that 'nobody has ever lived in the past.”

• “So it will not do to think there is a usable line, whether historical or aesthetic, dividing invented traditions from real ones. But neither does this mean that we cannot and need not make judgments. If this book has argued, on the one hand, that traditions are constantly changing and that the domestic Christmas idyll is surprisingly new, it has also argued that most of the problems we face at Christmas today- the greedy materialism, the jaded consumerism, the deliberate manipulation not only of goods but also of private desires and personal relationships into purchasable commodities- are surprisingly old. They date, in fact, to the emergence of the domestic Christmas itself. And they were being publicly debated, and lamented, as early as the 1830s.This, too, is difficult to accept. It is natural to believe that the issues we face today are new ones- issues of unprecedented complexity the likes of which have never been encountered.”

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• The Christmas tree entered American society through the avenues of commercial culture, but it did so in the name of precommercial folk culture.

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• It was only in the fourth century that the Church officially decided to observe Christmas on December 25. And this date was chosen not for religious reasons but simply because it happened to mark the approximate arrival of the winter solstice, an event that was celebrated long before the advent of Christianity.

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• Like wassailers and mummers, Belsnickles often took on the role of beggars, visiting houses (and shops) to demand rather than offer gifts.

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• MAKING CHRISTMAS an indoor family affair meant enmeshing it in the commercial marketplace.

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• There is no biblical or historical reason to place the birth of Jesus on December 25.

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• But Christmas trees became widely known in the United States during the mid-1830s, almost a decade earlier than any broad-based immigration from Germany can be said to have occurred.

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• Since there existed no Christmas rituals that were socially acceptable to the upper class, Pintard took on the responsibility of inventing them—characteristically enough, in the name of restoring something that had been forgotten.

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• Making children the center of joyous attention marked an inversion of the social hierarchy, which meant that a part of the structure of an older Christmas ritual was being precisely preserved: People in positions of social and economic authority were offering gifts to their dependents.

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• What had changed, then, was not that the rowdier ways of celebrating Christmas had disappeared, or even that they had diminished, but that a new kind of holiday celebration, domestic and child-centered, had been fashioned and was now being claimed as the “real” Christmas.16 The rest of it—public drunkenness and threats or acts of violence, “rough music”—had been redefined as crime, “making night hideous.”

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• It was actually illegal to celebrate Christmas in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681 (the fine was five shillings). Only in the middle of the nineteenth century did Christmas gain legal recognition as an official public holiday in New England.

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First Sentence edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Stephen Nissenbaum (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Pulitzer Prize (Finalist, 1997: History)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 394.26630973

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Christianity › Holidays › Christmas
• Books › Nonfiction › Social Sciences › Customs & Traditions
• Books › History › Americas › United States

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Book Review: On May 11, 1659, the Massachusetts General Court banned Christmas. More specifically, it outlawed "observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way." Miscreants would be fined five shillings. The law stayed in force until 1681, when the mother country's disapproval compelled the colony to repeal it. The local authorities continued to denounce the December holiday long after it became legal. "Christmas-keepers," the Harvard rector Increase Mather complained in 1687, were doing something "highly dishonourable to the name of Christ."