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Rating: 
Summary: Marling's "Merry Christmas" Charts Holiday Traditions
Review: Around Christmas 1983, controversial Philadelphia Daily News columnist Jill Porter semi-humorously theorized in a column that Christ was an invention so we could celebrate Christmas, rather than the reason for the season. The outcry, among the worst any Porter column generated, caused her to spend her next columns backpeddling from that assertion.Christmas celebrated in its secular, sensory state is a perfect subject for cultural historian and author Karal Ann Marling to tackle. Her books on Elvis Presley, Disney architecture, and the TV-based 1950s culture dove deep in the sweet, shallow end of Americana. She successfully read us the instructions and mission statements behind history's garish, outlandish symbols and sounds, from tail fins to tinsel, seeing links and reasons deepening the meaning of a generation's shared memories. It's no surprise, then, that "Merry Christmas" is Marling's most personal, well-researched and satisfying book yet. She writes as researcher, scholar, stubborn child (her epilogue on Christmas cookies is a delight, her closing a Santa Claus chapter by chastising "Dear Abby" surprising and funny), and lover of Christmas legends old, new, and rediscovered. Except for a chapter on 1890s African-American Christmas celebrations (which text and illustrations are among the book's most intriguing chapters and merited such commentary) Marling resists the temptation to debunk or overanalyze her Christmas subjects. She writes with the knowledge, nostalgia, and joy of someone loving the season and wanting to share what she has learned. Through 370 pages Marling sleigh rides across 150 years' Christmas history (or, better put, "Her"-story; Marling's version emphasizes women's creating and preserving holiday tradition). She explains and provides context for traditions like gift giving and wrapping, huge feasts, Christmas cards, holiday charity (with remarkable photos of a mass dinner for the poor in 1890s New York), department store parades and decorated windows, Christmas plants and trees and glowing with candle or electric light. She also walks through the winter wonderland of Christmas heroes real and imagined: Scrooge, Bing Crosby, Grinch and of course, Santa Claus as described by Thomas Nast, Coca-Cola, and the dreams of generations of children worldwide. Marling does nearly all of this through the distant eye of media: magazine articles covers (touching on Norman Rockwell and J.P. Leyendecker with Nast),TV and movie screens, (yearly specials and songs restoring Christmas' homey, familial warmth) children's books (long-neglected holiday tales from Washington Irving and L.Frank Baum -- Baum's a Santa biography! - may get new attention after being described here). Even 100 years of department store Christmas windows (which Marling describes with delicious detail) show not only from behind a economic glass impenetrable to the poor, but from an idealized Christmas past few Americans enjoyed entirely. That is Marling's point. If the night of the dear Savior's birth connects only dimly with America's celebration (a point Marling needed to cover sooner and harder)it may stem from Christ's birth being the most documentable story of the season. As Marling burrows through Clement Clark Moore poems and 19th century magazine stories through films like Crosby's "Holiday Inn" and "White Christmas," the seasons' backstory and memory bank grows and artificially glows until the Star of Bethlehem is outglowered by images of Chevy Chase and Liberace's garish Christmas decorations. The Nativity is one true, gritty, essential Christmas story surrounded by layers of fantasy. Marling's paralleling Joan Crawford's public, radio-broadcast Christmas to her cruel, well-publicized private one, antidotes the more sugary memories here, as do quotes from J.D. Salinger's "Catcher In The Rye" and from Elvis Presley's "notorious" 1957 Christmas LP. Those bemoaning the season's commercialism may find comfort and joy in "Merry Christmas." Marling traces protests against the holiday's economic emphasis to the 1820s; since, everything from billboard campaigns to TV's "Charlie Brown Christmas" and "The Grinch" to the rise in more personalized and religious Christmas cards have addressed that conflict. Those rejecting supplemental Christmas traditions entirely (from 1870s Puritan factories and schools open Christmas Day to Michael Jackson, profiled at Christmas in a magazine although he did not celebrate the holiday) will be disheartened by their growth and acceptance, and Marling's tacit approval. No protest over purpose diminishes the quality and scope of Marling's work, among the most essential books ever written about the Christmas season. Marling closes her prologue by saying, "Incidentally, this book would make a good present for your mom!" Matronly, perhaps, but I liked it too; like any good, factual story with a happy ending, "Merry Christmas" is as welcome a Christmas re-read as any Christmas tradition it charts. I look forward to her next project.
Rating: 
Summary: Save your money (and your Christmas spirit)
Review: I guess my search for the perfect history of Christmas will trudge on. While containing some interesting facts (e.g., Washington Irving's mythical view of the English Christmas predated Dickens by 20 years), the organization of the book make it a real pain to read. I can't begin to express how much I dislike the chapter organization. Marling has laid things out by topic (e.g., Christmas cards, Santa Claus, gift-giving). As a 'history' of Christmas, this organization makes it an utter hassle to comprehend how things played out over time. It would have been much more effective and compelling to read if the book were chronological. That way, one could truly appreciate the development of the holiday in America, rather than have to piece things together after the fact. ... I must also take issue with the illustrations in the book. The few that are actually in the book are dreadfully reproduced black and white pictures. Instead of appearing festive, they are just depressing. I thought this book would help me to really get into the Christmas spirit. Instead, I found myself wishing I'd saved the money to buy myself a Christmas CD or video.
Rating:
Summary: Look at it before buying
Review: If I had browsed through this book before buying it, I would have rejected it for these reasons: content is superficial, author's tone is smarty-pants academic as well as wordy,and the illustrations are poorly reproduced.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating, intellegent, but not overbearing
Review: Marling has a way of exploring topics with a balance of intellectual curiosity and lightheartedness. Like the other books of hers I've read, she explores Christmas traditions (the book is organized by topics of Christmas, such as giftwrapping, or the tradition of giving cards) by tracing their development over time. In the process, some of our assumptions about where our traditions came from get shaken out to air. Fun, thought-provoking, and very much worth the read, as is her book _As Seen on TV_, which examines the pop culture of the 1950's.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, intellegent, but not overbearing
Review: Marling has a way of exploring topics with a balance of intellectual curiosity and lightheartedness. Like the other books of hers I've read, she explores Christmas traditions (the book is organized by topics of Christmas, such as giftwrapping, or the tradition of giving cards) by tracing their development over time. In the process, some of our assumptions about where our traditions came from get shaken out to air. Fun, thought-provoking, and very much worth the read, as is her book _As Seen on TV_, which examines the pop culture of the 1950's.
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