Author: Jo Robinson Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 0688109616 Category : Self-Help Languages : en Pages : 212
Book Description
Nine years and thirteen printings later, Unplug the Christmas Machine is still the undisputed guide to creating a joyful, stress-free holiday season. Revised and filled with new material, this book will enjoy even greater popularity in the years to come. In the pages of Unplug the Christmas Machine, Jo Robinson and jean Coppock Staeheli answer the questions they have heard most often in their many years of talking with people about Christmas, such as: "How can I reduce the stress of preparing for Christmas?" "How can I make our celebration more spiritual and less materialistic?" "How can I get my husband to be more enthusiastic about Christmas?" "How can I get my wife to relax and enjoy the celebration?" and "How can I help my children see that Christmas is more than just presents?" Readers will turn to this book for inspiration and practical advice year after year. Sixteen years after it first appeared, this perennial favorite is still the book that thousands turn to for sound, no-nonsense advice on how to combat Christmas commercialism and create a joyful, stress-free holiday season. The authors answer all the most commonly asked questions, from "How can I reduce the stress of preparing for Christmas?" to "How can I teach my children that Christmas means mote than just presents?" and many more.
Author: Bruce David Forbes Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520933729 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 198
Book Description
Written for everyone who loves and is simultaneously driven crazy by the holiday season, Christmas: A Candid History provides an enlightening, entertaining perspective on how the annual Yuletide celebration got to be what it is today. In a fascinating, concise tour through history, the book tells the story of Christmas—from its pre-Christian roots, through the birth of Jesus, to the holiday's spread across Europe into the Americas and beyond, and to its mind-boggling transformation through modern consumerism. Packed with intriguing stories, based on research into myriad sources, full of insights, the book explores the historical origins of traditions including Santa, the reindeer, gift giving, the Christmas tree, Christmas songs and movies, and more. The book also offers some provocative ideas for reclaiming the joy and meaning of this beloved, yet often frustrating, season amid the pressures of our fast-paced consumer culture. DID YOU KNOW For three centuries Christians did not celebrate Christmas? Puritans in England and New England made Christmas observances illegal? St. Nicholas is an elf in the famous poem "The Night Before Christmas"? President Franklin Roosevelt changed the dateof Thanksgiving in order to lengthen the Christmas shopping season? Coca-Cola helped fashion Santa Claus's look in an advertising campaign?
Author: Bill McKibben Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1439142556 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 48
Book Description
Too many people have come to dread the approach of the holidays, a season that should -- and can -- be the most relaxed, intimate, joyful, and spiritual time of the year. In this book, Bill McKibben offers some suggestions on how to rethink Christmastime, so that our current obsession with present-buying becomes less important than the dozens of other possible traditions and celebrations. Working through their local churches, McKibben and his colleagues found that people were hungry for a more joyful Christmas season. For many, trying to limit the amount of money they spent at Christmas to about a hundred dollars per family, was a real spur to their creativity -- and a real anchor against the relentless onslaught of commercials and catalogs that try to say Christmas is only Christmas if it comes from a store. McKibben shows how the store-bought Christmas developed and how out of tune it is with our current lives, when we're really eager for family fellowship for community involvement, for contact with the natural world, and also for the blessed silence and peace that the season should offer. McKibben shows us how to return to a simpler and more enjoyable holiday. Christmas is too wonderful a celebration to give up on, too precious a time simply to repeat the same empty gestures from year to year. This book will serve as a road map to a Christmas far more joyful than the ones you've known in the past.