Merry Christmas! Celebrating AmericaÕs Greatest Holiday PDF Download

Author: Karal Ann Marling
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674040625
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
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.

Author:
Publisher: Portable Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
For two decades, from the Bronx to L.A., Patoski has been taking pictures of holiday-decorated front yards. In this fascinating collection of displays ranging from the conventional to the bizarre, Patoski offer something for everyone--an enchanting view of the holidays that could tempt even Scrooge to put a light in the window! 100 color photos.

Author: Callista Gingrich
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1621574490
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
A book to challenge the status quo, spark a debate, and get people talking about the issues and questions we face as a country!

Author: Erin Eitter Kono
Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
ISBN: 9781402738159
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
On each of the twelve days before her Christmas visit, Emma's cousin Jake sends her a letter describing the history, geography, animals, and interesting sites of Wisconsin. Uses the cumulative pattern of the traditional carol to present amusing state trivia at the end of each letter.

Author: David Cohen
Publisher: Harper San Francisco
ISBN: 9780002179683
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Captioned photographs depict Christmas time throughout the United States.

Author:
Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
ISBN: 9781402762475
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
This holiday book series takes kids on a unique cross-country journey. Through lively, chatty letters home, each of these six books follows a child on a fun visit with a friend or relative over winter vacation. Along the way, the young narrators convey a host of fascinating and kid-friendly facts about what they do and where they go. Full color.

Author: Jennifer J. Stewart
Publisher: Union Square Kids
ISBN: 9781402770364
Category : Arizona
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Isabella writes a letter home each of the twelve days she spends exploring Arizona at Christmastime, as her cousin Carlos shows her everything from a cactus wren in a palo verde tree to twelve Grand Canyon mules. Includes facts about Arizona.

Author:
Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
ISBN: 9781402738173
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
Through letters and a funny story based on the classic Christmas song, popular illustrator Remkiewicz takes youngsters on a holiday trip to Florida while presenting fun facts about the Sunshine State. Full color.

Author: Penne L. Restad
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199923582
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
The manger or Macy's? Americans might well wonder which is the real shrine of Christmas, as they take part each year in a mix of churchgoing, shopping, and family togetherness. But the history of Christmas cannot be summed up so easily as the commercialization of a sacred day. As Penne Restad reveals in this marvelous new book, it has always been an ambiguous meld of sacred thoughts and worldly actions-- as well as a fascinating reflection of our changing society. In Christmas in America, Restad brilliantly captures the rise and transformation of our most universal national holiday. In colonial times, it was celebrated either as an utterly solemn or a wildly social event--if it was celebrated at all. Virginians hunted, danced, and feasted. City dwellers flooded the streets in raucous demonstrations. Puritan New Englanders denounced the whole affair. Restad shows that as times changed, Christmas changed--and grew in popularity. In the early 1800s, New York served as an epicenter of the newly emerging holiday, drawing on its roots as a Dutch colony (St. Nicholas was particularly popular in the Netherlands, even after the Reformation), and aided by such men as Washington Irving. In 1822, another New Yorker named Clement Clarke Moore penned a poem now known as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," virtually inventing the modern Santa Claus. Well-to-do townspeople displayed a German novelty, the decorated fir tree, in their parlors; an enterprising printer discovered the money to be made from Christmas cards; and a hodgepodge of year-end celebrations began to coalesce around December 25 and the figure of Santa. The homecoming significance of the holiday increased with the Civil War, and by the end of the nineteenth century a full- fledged national holiday had materialized, forged out of borrowed and invented custom alike, and driven by a passion for gift-giving. In the twentieth century, Christmas seeped into every niche of our conscious and unconscious lives to become a festival of epic proportions. Indeed, Restad carries the story through to our own time, unwrapping the messages hidden inside countless movies, books, and television shows, revealing the inescapable presence--and ambiguous meaning--of Christmas in contemporary culture. Filled with colorful detail and shining insight, Christmas in America reveals not only much about the emergence of the holiday, but also what our celebrations tell us about ourselves. From drunken revelry along colonial curbstones to family rituals around the tree, from Thomas Nast drawing the semiofficial portrait of St. Nick to the making of the film Home Alone, Restad's sparkling account offers much to amuse and ponder.

Author:
Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
ISBN: 9781402764400
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
Emily writes a letter home each of the twelve days she spends exploring the five boroughs of New York City at Christmastime, as her cousin Daniel shows her everything from a pigeon in a Central Park tree to twelve streamers twirling on New Year's Eve. Includes facts about New York City.