Christmas: A History
Connelly (History/Lancaster Univ.) examines the antiquity and cultural significance of the English Christmas in this convincing response to the invented-institution thesis recently fashionable in popular studies. The English Christmas is hardly some Victorian fabrication or over-elaboration, claims Connelly in answer to some cultural- studies theorists, but a timeworn expression of national valuesat least, values of the period between 1780, when the holiday season went into a brief eclipse, and the Age of Television, which co-opted Christmas Day into a consumerism epitomized by American retailing techniques. Let there be no doubt, he continues in sometimes labored though oddly beguiling prose: The English Christmas was essentially invented by the Victorians. Yet, more importantly, there are also continuities and commitments to the past that act not just as survivals within the Victorian trappings, but indeed underpin Christmas, and particularly its English expression: the open-handedness displayed by early Anglo-Saxons in their wintertime rituals; a responsibility typified by Queen Elizabeth's demand for nobles and gentry to do their duty in displaying hospitality to their tenants during the twelve days of Christmas; the honest mirth, social leveling, and political pranks seen in the harlequinades and pantomimes at court; and the seasonal joys of returning to home and hearth. Connelly also finds that the beauty and grace of carols are at the heart of the songs that fired the genius of English music and inspired her composers. The English people would never have responded so deliriously to A Christmas Carol had not ingrained attitudes served as referents. The popular media may tout the vulgarity and commercialism of Christmas, yet Connelly wagers that if you scratch an English Yuletide merrymaker you'll find someone taking comfort ``in the tokens of the old world'': an ancient, bucolic vision imbued with a sense of antiquity, decency, generosity, and fair play.  --Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.