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The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America's Most Cherished Holiday Audiobook
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PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST
Drawing on a wealth of research, this "fascinating" book (The New York Times Book Review) charts the invention of our current Yuletide traditions, from St. Nicholas to the Christmas tree and, perhaps most radically, the practice of giving gifts to children.
Anyone who laments the excesses of Christmas might consider the Puritans of colonial Massachusetts: they simply outlawed the holiday. The Puritans had their reasons, since Christmas was once an occasion for drunkenness and riot, when poor "wassailers" extorted food and drink from the well-to-do. In this intriguing and innovative work of social history, Stephen Nissenbaum rediscovers Christmas's carnival origins and shows how it was transformed, during the nineteenth century, into a festival of domesticity and consumerism.
Bursting with detail, filled with subversive readings of such seasonal classics as "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and A Christmas Carol, The Battle for Christmas captures the glorious strangeness of the past even as it helps us better understand our present.
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About Stephen Nissenbaum
Stephen Nissenbaum received his AB from Harvard College, his MA from Columbia University, and his PhD from the University of Wisconsin. He has taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst since 1968, and is currently professor of history there. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Charles Warren Center at Harvard. In addition, he was James P. Harrison Professor of History at the College of William and Mary, 1989-90.
About Mike Chamberlain
Mike Chamberlain is an actor and voice-over performer in Los Angeles whose audiobook narration has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards. His voice credits range from radio commercials and television narration to animation and video game characters. Stage trained at Boston College, he has performed works from Shakespeare and the classics to contemporary drama and comedy.