Holiday Season Resources at SUNY Broome

How do we understand Christmas? What does it mean? This book is a lively introduction to the study of popular culture through one central case study. It explores the cultural, social and historical contexts of Christmas in the UK, USA and Australia, covering such topics as fiction, film, television, art, newspapers and magazines, war, popular music and carols. Chapters explore the ways in which the production of meaning is mediated by the social and cultural activities surrounding Christmas (watching Christmas films, television, listening or engaging with popular music and carols), its relationship to a set of basic values (the idealised construct of the family), social relationships (community), and the ways in which ideological discourses are used and mobilised, not least in times of conflict, terrorism and war. Packed with examples ranging from Charles Dickens' seminal text, A Christmas Carol, Coca-colonisation and Santa Claus, Victorian cartoons and Christmas cards, to Dr Who, The Office, 'A Fairy Tale of New York', 'Happy Christmas (War is Over)', and such dystopian films as Jingle All the Way and All I Want For Christmas, the case studies offer an incisive account of the ways in which Christmas relates to social change, and how such recent events as 9/11 and the continuing conflict in Iraq focus attention on traditional themes of community and family. Christmas, Ideology and Popular Culture offers students and scholars alike an opportunity to explore the hidden agendas of the world's most popular festival and what it means to the outsider looking in.

For poets, priests, and politicians--and especially ordinary Germans--in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the image of the loving nuclear family gathered around the Christmas tree symbolized the unity of the nation at large. German Christmas was supposedly organic, a product of the winter solstice rituals of pagan "Teutonic" tribes, the celebration of the birth of Jesus, and the age-old customs that defined German character. Yet, as Joe Perry argues, Germans also used these annual celebrations to contest the deepest values that held the German community together: faith, family, and love, certainly, but also civic responsibility, material prosperity, and national belonging. This richly illustrated volume explores the invention, evolution, and politicization of Germany's favorite national holiday. According to Perry, Christmas played a crucial role in public politics, as revealed in the militarization of "War Christmas" during World War I and World War II, the Nazification of Christmas by the Third Reich, and the political manipulation of Christmas during the Cold War. Perry offers a close analysis of the impact of consumer culture on popular celebration and the conflicts created as religious, commercial, and political authorities sought to control the holiday's meaning. By unpacking the intimate links between domestic celebration, popular piety, consumer desires, and political ideology, Perry concludes that family festivity was central in the making and remaking of public national identities.

Christmas is at times a universal story, and many of the images here are recognizable across cultures. We hear and see proud, joyful singing; the adoration of the Infant Jesus; and the peaceful strains of Adeste Fidelis. But here as well are the rich traditions and legends specific to the Hispanic culture, such as the celebration of the posadas for nine nights leading up to Christmas, with candy raining down from colorful swinging piñatas, egg shells filled with confetti, and beautiful paper lanterns crafted to illuminate the town on Christmas Eve. There is the "Legend of the Poinsettia" where a poor child embarrassed by the modesty of his gift for the Christ Child sheds tears on the dull green leaves of the familiar plant, thereby miraculously transforming them to a brilliant red. And here too are hopeful children singing "If You Give Me Meat Pies," asking for the reward of warm meat pies and rice pudding in return for their sweet caroling.Thirty-six inspiring literary selections comprise this enchanting collection of works from Mexican, Colombian, Cuban, and Puerto Rican writers--writers who represent the range of Hispanic minority groups in the United States. Through these stories, traditional tales, songs, and poetry, readers gain a true understanding of the importance of the Christmas holiday within the Hispanic community, and begin to grasp the issues that inform the Hispanic American creative process--issues such as communal identity, patriotism, poverty, assimilation, and religion. With vivid illustrations and original Spanish text for all poetry, this fascinating anthology will inform readers of all cultural backgrounds, and give them the opportunity to celebrate this cherished time with a newly extended family.

The delightful and touching stories in Christmas in Nevada tell how Nevadans have celebrated the holiday, from 1858 to the present day. Some are told by well-known Nevadans, such as Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Robert Laxalt, and former governors Bob List and Richard Bryan, but much more of the book shows ordinary Nevadans celebrating in diverse ways the wonders of the season. The range of the state's ethnic and immigrant heritage is showcased by stories of Basque, Mexican American, Native American, and African American celebrations, along with traditions of Italian, German, Danish, and Serbian origin. Some of the more unusual accounts include the story of three miners trapped underground for forty-five days during the Christmas season, Tonopah's "Nevergreen" tree, and Reno's Santa Pub Crawl with thousands of costumed revelers. Through extensive research and personal interviews, Patricia D. Cafferata has created a heartwarming collection of stories, guaranteed to be treasured. Whether Santa arrives on a sleigh in a mining camp in Silver Peak, Esmeralda County, or a zip line down Fremont Street, Las Vegas, Christmas in Nevada brings warm memories, excitement, and good cheer. * Includes a story from each of the state's seventeen counties * Illustrated with 57 historic photographs, many previously unpublished

"Since the mid-1820's, a series of lectures has been delivered each year over the Christmas period in the world-famous Faraday Lecture Theatre at The Royal Institution of Great Britain by prominent scientists, addressed specifically to an audience of children. Initially made accessible in book form, the lectures have been nationally televised throughout the UK and distributed worldwide since the 1960's, making them accessible to an even larger audience. The importance of these lectures in promoting science to a broad audience is perhaps best gauged by the fact that an image of one of Faraday's lectures appeared on the Bank of England £20 note in the 1990's. This anthology brings together, for the first time, a carefully chosen selection of 11 lectures from the 1860's to the 1990's. The selection includes lectures by Michael Faraday, arguably the most important and influential 19th-century physicist, and Lawrence Bragg, the youngest ever winner of the Nobel Prize. Through this work, readers will come to grips with the changing nature of popular science lectures over the past 140 years."

This beautiful book of thirty-eight essays, illustrated by Mississippi's premier water colorist Wyatt Waters, will ring true with treasured recollections of Christmases past. Remember the Christmas it snowed on the Mississippi Coast? Glen Allison recalls that miracle. Richard Ford and Waters tell exactly what they felt when they first laid eyes on a bicycle left under the tree by Santa Claus. These Mississippians celebrate Christmas pageants, the decorating, the family dinners--even as they recognize war and loss as part of our lives and sometimes part of our holidays.

The day after Thanksgiving, five months into the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur flew to American positions in the north and grandly announced an end-the-war-by-Christmas offensive, despite recent evidence of intervention by Mao's Chinese troops. Marching north in plunging temperatures, General Edward Almond's X Corps, which included a Marine division under the able leadership of General Oliver Smith, encountered little resistance. But thousands of Chinese, who had infiltrated across the frozen Yalu River, were lying in wait and would soon trap tens of thousands of US troops. Led by the Marines, an overwhelmed X Corps evacuated the frigid, mountainous Chosin Reservoir vastness and fought a swarming enemy and treacherous snow and ice to reach the coast. Weather, terrain, Chinese firepower, and a 4,000-foot chasm made escape seem impossible in the face of a vanishing Christmas. But endurance and sacrifice prevailed, and the last troopships weighed anchor on Christmas Eve.

America's Favorite Holidays explores how five of America's culturally important holidays-Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, and Thanksgiving-came to be what they are today, seasonal and religious celebrations heavily influenced by modern popular culture. Deftly distilling information from a wide range of sources, Bruce David Forbes reveals often-surprising answers to questions about each holiday's traditions. Was Christmas always as commercialized as it is today? Is Thanksgiving a religious or secular holiday? When did we begin trick-or-treating on Halloween? Appealing and insightful, America's Favorite Holidays satisfies our curiosity about the origins of our holidays and the fascinating ways in which religion and culture mix.

The soldiers gently sway on a cool breeze. Neither side moves, or speaks. They examine one another, like long lost brothers, trying to identify these strange faces in front of them.' Private James Boyce The Western Front, Christmas 1914: lights appear from the German trenches, ghosts rise from behind the horizon, soldiers meet between the firing lines. The events which follow are some of the most astounding stories of the Great War told through the eyes of one soldier, Private James Boyce

Religion and the Politics of Time is an extensive study of the changes in religious holidays in Old Regime and Revolutionary France. In Old Regime France, local bishops decided which holidays people living in their dioceses were required to observe. Even for non-Catholics, these were official holidays subject to the same regulations as Sundays, when most work was forbidden. In the seventeenth century, a diocese might have as few as 25 such days per year, or it might have as many as 45. Those numbers would decline significantly over the course of the eighteenth century in most of France as many holidays fell out of favor with most of society. Those changes, however, were only a prelude to the events of the French Revolution, when the revolutionaries attempted to do away with all traditional holidays and to institute a ten-day week. When Napoleon eliminated the republican calendar, he also took control over religious holidays from the church, while retaining only four holidays per year, and eliminating most legal prohibitions on Sunday work. Religion and the Politics of Time is the first full-length study of changes that affected how and when the people of France were expected to celebrate or to work.

Happy Times in Norway is a moving and delicately humorous picture of Undset's own blissful home life before her nation fell to the Nazi occupation. Captured here is the excitement of a Norwegian Christmas, the Seventeenth of May, and summer in the idyllic mountains, as well as the chaotic adventure of raising two energetic boys. With vivid detail and illuminating descriptions of the landscape, Happy Times in Norway is infused with the wish that those cherished days could come again.

José Tomas de Cuéllar (1830-1894) was a Mexican writer noted for his sharp sense of humor and gift for caricature. Having a Ball and Christmas Eve are two novellas written in the costumbrista style, made popular in the mid-nineteenth century by the periodical press in which these sketches of contemporary manners were first published. The stories are a sensitive reflection of the effects of modernization brought by an authoritarian regime dedicated to order and progress.Christmas Eve describes a volatile middle class in which people pursue pleasure and entertainment without regard to morality. Having a Ball depicts women and their dedication to fashion. It is through them that Cuellar examines a society susceptible to foreign values, the importation of which radically altered the face of Mexico and its traditional customs.