Merry Christmas!: Celebrating America’s Greatest Holiday by Karal Ann Marling

Description

Bibliographic Details

• Author: Karal Ann Marling
• Title: Merry Christmas!: Celebrating America's Greatest Holiday
• Publisher: ‎ Harvard University Press; First Harvard University Press Paperback Edition (December 20, 2001)
• Language: ‎ English
• Format: Trade Paperback – 442 pages‏
• ISBN-10: ‎ 0674006798
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0674006799
• Item Weight: ‎ 1.75 pounds
• Dimensions: ‎ 6.5 x 1.2 x 9.75 inches
• Book Condition: Used – Very Good (may show some minor markings on page edges)
• Cover Condition: Very Good
• Edition: First Harvard University Press Paperback Edition

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 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.

About the Author:

Karal Ann Marling (born November 5, 1943) is an American cultural historian and writer. A professor emerita of the University of Minnesota, she is an American studies scholar with a special focus on the visual arts. The New York Times described her as a "keen-eyed critic of American popular culture." One book reviewer described her as a stylistic and intellectual heir to both Erma Bombeck and Tom Wolfe.

Originally from the East Coast, she earned a Ph.D. at Bryn Mawr College before she came to Minnesota in 1977 to teach. She has since become an acknowledged expert on her adopted home state, including on the cultural significance of state fairs (including the Minnesota State Fair) and shopping malls (including the Mall of America).

Marking has written 19 full-length non-fiction books.