Can I read Merry Christmas! : Celebrating America’s Greatest Holiday on EtoBox?

Merry Christmas! : Celebrating America’s Greatest Holiday by Karal Ann Marling; Harvard University. Press is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Merry Christmas! : Celebrating America’s Greatest Holiday about?

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

Author

Karal Ann Marling; Harvard University. Press

Publisher

Harvard University, Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies

Published

2000

Language

EN

ISBN

9780674040625

Subjects

History, Sociology, Science

Rating

3.9 / 5 (30 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14