Lexington Books
Pages: 558
•
Trim: 6½ x 9¼
978-1-4985-4181-7 • Hardback • December 2017 • $184.00 • (£142.00)
978-1-4985-4182-4 • eBook • December 2017 • $174.50 • (£135.00)
Lauren Rosewarne is senior lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne.
Introduction: “Hasn’t everything already been written about Christmas? Between Dickens and Dr Seuss?”
Chapter 1: “The moment anyone puts on a Santa Claus costume they become a sort of semi-holy figure”: Faith and Belief in Christmas
Chapter 2: “I feel, for some reason, that this is a good time of year for looking backwards”: Time, Tradition and Festive Nostalgia
Chapter 3: “Can’t we pretend to like one another? It’s Christmas for heaven’s sakes”: Home and Family at the Holidays
Chapter 4: “I hate baubles and I hate tinsel and I hate ticky tacky”: Stress, Sadness and Seasonal Depression
Chapter 5: “Now is the time of year for the impossible to become possible”: The Supernatural in the Christmas Narrative
Chapter 6: “Sell sell celebration”: Christmas, Commerce and Consumption
Conclusion: “Snow melts, lights come down. It’s all just an illusion.”
We know that movies and television powerfully influence our expectations of what Christmas should be like, look like, and feel like. Lauren Rosewarne impressively scrutinizes nearly 1,000 contemporary works and shows us how their seasonal platitudes feed and sustain our notions of the holiday ideal.
— Hank Stuever, author of "Tinsel: A Search for America’s Christmas Present"