Unwrapping Christmas Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of Unwrapping Christmas book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.
It’s that time of year again, and with excitement and high expectations, Rose has planned the perfect Christmas for her family and friends. But when she feels them drifting away during a time that should celebrate togetherness, Rose is forced to slow down in the most unexpected way. In this whimsical, uplifting story, she discovers the true meaning of giving.
Offers guidance for taking part in the Advent tradition of the Jesse Tree, with scriptural passages, devotions, and activities intended to apply their themes.
The New York Times bestselling Christmas classic. Over 250,000 books in print. An annual bestseller. Thousands of readers have already fallen in love with Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts, and this Christmas, Ann will help readers celebrate the lineage and the majesty of God’s greatest gift—Jesus Christ. In what has already become a holiday classic, Voskamp reaches back into the pages of the Old Testament to explore the lineage of Jesus via the advent tradition of “The Jesse Tree.” Beginning with Jesse, the father of David, The Greatest Gift retraces the epic pageantry of mankind, from Adam to the Messiah, with each day’s reading pointing to the coming promise of Christ. Sure to become a holiday staple in every Christian home, The Greatest Gift is the perfect gift for the holidays and a timeless reminder of the true meaning of Christmas.
Rituals and Traditional Events in the Modern World by Jennifer Laing,Warwick Frost Pdf
Many events have evolved over centuries, drawing on local customs and conditions. However, as the world becomes increasingly globalised, traditional events and the identities they support are increasingly being challenged and rituals may be lost. Reacting against this trend towards homogeneity, communities strive to preserve and even recreate their traditional events, which may require rituals to be resurrected or reinvented for a new audience. The aim of this book is to explore the role of traditional events and rituals in the modern world. The 16 chapters cover a range of case studies of the performance of ritual through events, including their historical antecedents and development over time, as well as their role in society, link with identities both seemingly fixed and fluid and their continued relevance. The cases examined are not museum pieces, but rather vibrant festivals and events that continue to persist. Drawing on the power of history and cultural tradition, they are manifestations of heritage, existing in three temporalities: celebrating the past, occurring in the present and aiming to continue into and influence the future. Iconic events including Chinese New Year, Hogmanay and the New Orleans Mardi Gras are examined and examples are drawn from a diverse range of countries such as South Korea, China, Laos, the United States, Scotland, Italy, India and Haiti. This volume provides a deep understanding upon the role of tradition and ritual within events, from a global perspective and will be valuable reading for students, researchers and academics interested in events, heritage and culture.
Analyzing Christmas in Film by Lauren Rosewarne Pdf
Film plays a vital role in the celebration of Christmas. For decades, it has taught audiences about what the celebration of the season looks like – from the decorations to the costumes and to the expected snowy weather – as well as mirrors our own festivities back to us. Films like It’s a Wonderful Life and Home Alone have come to play key roles in real-life domestic celebrations: watching such titles has become, for many families, every bit as important as tree-trimming and leaving cookies out for Santa. These films have exported the American take on the holiday far and wide and helped us conjure an image of the perfect holiday. Rather than settling the ‘what is a Christmas film?’ debate – indeed, Die Hard and Lethal Weapon are discussed within – Analyzing Christmas in Film: Santa to the Supernatural focuses on the how Christmas is presented on the deluge of occasions when it appears. While most Christmas films are secular, religion makes many cameos, appearing through Nativity references, storylines involving spiritual rebirth, the framing of Santa as a Christ-like figure and the all-importance of family, be it the Holy family or just those gathered around the dining table. Also explored are popular narratives involving battles with stress and melancholy, single parents and Christmas martyrs, visits from ghosts and angels, big cities and small towns, break-ups and make-ups and the ticking clock of mortality. Nearly 1000 films are analyzed in this volume to determine what the portrayal of Christmas reveals about culture, society and faith as well as sex roles, consumerism, aesthetics and aspiration.
Christmas and the British: A Modern History by Martin Johnes Pdf
The modern Christmas was made by the Victorians and rooted in their belief in commerce, family and religion. Their rituals and traditions persist to the present day but the festival has also been changed by growing affluence, shifting family structures, greater expectations of happiness and material comfort, technological developments and falling religious belief. Christmas became a battleground for arguments over consumerism, holiday entitlements, social obligations, communal behaviour and the influence of church, state and media. Even in private, it encouraged reflection on social change and the march of time. Amongst those unhappy at the state of the world or their own lives, Christmas could induce much cynicism and even loathing but for a quieter majority it was a happy time, a moment of a joy in a sometimes difficult world that made the festival more than just an integral feature of the calendar: Christmas was one of British culture's emotional high points. Moreover, it was also a testimony to the enduring importance of family, shared values and a common culture in the UK. Martin Johnes shows how Christmas and its traditions have been lived, adapted and thought about in Britain since 1914. Christmas and the British is about the festival's social, cultural and economic functions, and its often forgotten status as both the most unusual and important day of the year
In Christmas as Religion, Christopher Deacy explores the premise that religion plays an elementary role in our understanding of the Christmas festival, but takes issue with much of the existing literature which is inclined to limit the contours and parameters of 'religion' to particular representations and manifestations of institutional forms of Christianity. 'Religion' is often tacitly identified as having an ecclesiastical frame of reference, so that if the Church is not deemed to play a central role in the practice of Christmas for many people today then it can legitimately be side-lined and relegated to the periphery of any discussion relating to what Christmas 'means'. Deacy argues that such approaches fail to take adequate stock of the manifold ways in which people's beliefs and values take shape in modern society. For example, Christmas films or radio programmes may comprise a non-specifically Christian, but nonetheless religiously rich, repository of beliefs, values, sentiments and aspirations. Therefore, this book makes the case for laying to rest the secularization thesis, with its simplistic assumption that religion in Western society is undergoing a period of escalating and irrevocable erosion, and to see instead that the secular may itself be a repository of the religious. Rather than see Christmas as comprising alternative or analogous forms of religious expression, or dependent on any causal relationship to the Christian tradition, Deacy maintains that it is religious per se, and, moreover, it is its very secularity that makes Christmas such a compelling, and even transcendent, religious holiday.
Celebrating The 12 Days of Christmas by Chris Marchand Pdf
The song “The 12 Days of Christmas” is a mainstay of the holiday season, but the practice of celebrating Christmas as a twelve-day festival fell out of fashion long ago in most cultures. In Celebrating the 12 Days of Christmas, author Chris Marchand explores the history behind the season and individual feast days from December 25 to January 6, and then offers suggestions for how you can celebrate it with your family, church, or community. Along with this, he provides answers to many of the nagging questions surrounding the holiday, such as the history behind the twelve-days song, why December 25 was chosen as the date, and what to do about its supposedly pagan origins. The challenge before us is to first help people see Christmas as a holiday that begins, rather than ends, on December 25, and then to together figure out how to reinvent Christmas in the present by learning how it was celebrated in the past.
Author : Joe Perry Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press Page : 416 pages File Size : 52,6 Mb Release : 2010-09-27 Category : History ISBN : 0807899410
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.
The Twelve Days of Christmas by Curtis G. Almquist Pdf
The twelve days of Christmas run from December 26 through January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, the date on which we traditionally recall the Magi's arrival to present gifts to the infant Jesus. For many, the sacred meaning of these days is lost. By Christmas night we are saturated with the holiday hype, overfed with music and food, and maybe quite disappointed that the presents we received have not fulfilled us. Almquist invites readers to go deeper than the tinsel and wrappings to the source of all the good gifts in life: love, forgiveness, joy, hope, and so on. These are gifts that, once unwrapped, will last and satisfy our spiritual cravings.
Consumption and Spirituality by Diego Rinallo,Linda M. Scott,Pauline Maclaran Pdf
This book sheds light on the consumption of spiritual products, services, experiences, and places through state-of-the-art studies by leading and emerging scholars in interpretive consumer research, marketing, sociology, anthropology, cultural, and religious studies. The collection brings together fresh views and scholarship on a cultural tension that is at the centre of the lives of countless individuals living in postmodern societies: the relationship between the material and the spiritual, the sacred and the profane. The book examines how a variety of agents - religious institutions, spiritual leaders, marketers and consumers - interact and co-create spiritual meanings in a post-disenchanted society that has been defined as a 'supermarket of the soul.' Consumption and Spirituality examines not only religious organizations, but also brands and marketers and the way they infuse their products, services and experiences with spiritual meanings that flow freely in the circuit of culture and can be appropriated by consumers even without purchase acts. From a consumer perspective, the book investigates how spiritual beliefs, practices, and experiences are now embedded into a global consumer culture. Rather than condemning consumption, the chapters in this book highlight consumers' agency and the creative processes through which authentic spiritual meanings are co-created from a variety of sources, local and global, and sacred and profane alike.
“Christmas movies are revealing windows into religion, consumerism, family, and American pop culture, and Zukowski offers a compelling, highly readable guide to this long-flourishing genre. Exploring classics as well as flops, he illuminates both the resilience and the limitations of the holiday’s celebration on screen.” —Leigh E. Schmidt, Washington University in St. Louis, author of Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays How the Grinch Stole Christmas weighs materialism against community. The Polar Express tests the wonder of miracles in an age of cynicism. And Die Hard (yes, Die Hard) wrestles with the impact of broken relationships on holiday joy. With Christmas on the Screen, journalist John A. Zukowski takes readers on an historic tour of Christmas films and changing American values to ask the question, “What does Christmas mean to us?”
Gary S. Cross,Distinguished Professor of Modern History Gary Cross
Author : Gary S. Cross,Distinguished Professor of Modern History Gary Cross Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand Page : 268 pages File Size : 42,6 Mb Release : 2004 Category : Family & Relationships ISBN : 9780195156669
The Cute and the Cool by Gary S. Cross,Distinguished Professor of Modern History Gary Cross Pdf
The cute child - spunky, yet dependent, naughty but nice - is largely a 20th-century invention. In this book, Gary Cross examines how that look emerged in American popular culture and how the cute turned into the cool, seemingly its opposite, in stories and games.
This is a comprehensive history of the world's midwinter gift-givers, showcasing the extreme diversity in their depictions as well as the many traits and functions these characters share. It tracks the evolution of these figures from the tribal priests who presided over winter solstice celebrations thousands of years before the birth of Christ, to Christian notables like St. Martin and St. Nicholas, to a variety of secular figures who emerged throughout Europe following the Protestant Reformation. Finally, it explains how the popularity of a poem about a "miniature sleigh" and "eight tiny reindeer" helped consolidate the diverse European gift-givers into an enduring tradition in which American children awake early on Christmas morning to see what Santa brought. Although the names, appearance, attire and gift-giving practices of the world's winter solstice gift-givers differ greatly, they are all recognizable as Santa, the personification of the Christmas and Midwinter festivals. Despite efforts to eliminate him by groups as diverse as the Puritans of seventeenth century New England, the Communist Party of the twentieth century Soviet Union and the government of Nazi Germany, Santa has survived and prospered, becoming one of the best known and most beloved figures in the world.