Book cover for Christmas

Christmas

Synopsis

Details

01 November 2018
256 pages
9781529003567
Imprint: Picador

Reviews

Flanders covers every aspect of Christmas . . . [Christmas] is . . . a catalogue of colourful information, and as surprising an assortment of items as any you might find heaped up under a tree.
A well-researched account. There are more footnotes here than there are presents under a Rockefeller Christmas tree. Indeed, the book is stuffed with facts – enough to satiate even the most ravenous postprandial taste for quizzing.
[An] entertaining biography . . . Following the fine tradition of light entertainment Christmas books, Judith Flanders provides lots of trivia . . . However, there is much more to it than that. Flanders is a respected social historian, best known for studies on Victorian life, and the strength of this warm book lies in its quiet erudition.
If you do want to think about the actual meaning of Christmas, why it still matters to us so much, the book you need is Christmas by the cultural historian Judith Flanders . . . which traces its “strange hybrid growth” all the way back to its origins.