Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case For A More Joyful Christmas
by Bill McKibben
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Too many people have come to dread the approach of the holidays, a season that should -- and can -- be the most relaxed, intimate, joyful, and spiritual time of the year. In this book, Bill McKibben offers some suggestions on how to rethink Christmastime, so that our current obsession with present-buying becomes less important than the dozens of other possible traditions and celebrations. Working through their local churches, McKibben and his colleagues found that people were hungry for a show more more joyful Christmas season. For many, trying to limit the amount of money they spent at Christmas to about a hundred dollars per family, was a real spur to their creativity -- and a real anchor against the relentless onslaught of commercials and catalogs that try to say Christmas is only Christmas if it comes from a store. McKibben shows how the store-bought Christmas developed and how out of tune it is with our current lives, when we're really eager for family fellowship for community involvement, for contact with the natural world, and also for the blessed silence and peace that the season should offer. McKibben shows us how to return to a simpler and more enjoyable holiday. Christmas is too wonderful a celebration to give up on, too precious a time simply to repeat the same empty gestures from year to year. This book will serve as a road map to a Christmas far more joyful than the ones you've known in the past. show lessTags
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A great little history of Christmas celebrations, along with some healthy suggestions on how to "reclaim" it from the corporations and find some true pleasure in the season and, yes, maybe even peace.
This was the right book for the right moment for me as we pass Thanksgiving and start into the Christmas season. A perfect segway into Advent. Bill McKibben is a wonderful author. I was not aware that he was so spiritually inclined, especially his Christian perspective. I appreciate his thoughtful approach to this holiday. It is a quick read and very captivating.
A very quick read that provided a handful of amazing stats and facts about how Christmas has become the consumption machine that it is. Great way to change perspective on making the holidays more joyful and reverent. Will certainly be thinking from now through the rest of the year on how to implement some of these ideas and create the holiday I want - not the one we are told to have.
A great little history of Christmas celebrations, along with some healthy suggestions on how to "reclaim" it from the corporations and find some true pleasure in the season and, yes, maybe even peace.
A great little history of Christmas celebrations, along with some healthy suggestions on how to "reclaim" it from the corporations and find some true pleasure in the season and, yes, maybe even peace.
A great little history of Christmas celebrations, along with some healthy suggestions on how to "reclaim" it from the corporations and find some true pleasure in the season and, yes, maybe even peace.
-- It's a coincidence I finished reading HUNDRED DOLLAR HOLIDAY by Bill McKibben in December. In the small book McKibben writes about history of Christmas, value of spending time with loved ones not money, & handmade gifts. On December 25 McKibben feeds birds. Neighbors receive cookies & carols. There aren't many new ideas in HUNDRED DOLLAR HOLIDAY but the book clad in brown paper is interesting. --
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Author Information
49+ Works 6,643 Members
Bill McKibben grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts. He was president of the Harvard Crimson newspaper in college. Immediately after college he joined the New Yorker magazine as a staff writer, and wrote much of the "Talk of the Town" column from 1982 to early 1987. After quitting this job, he soon moved to the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New show more York. His first book, The End of Nature, was published in 1989 by Random House after being serialized in the New Yorker. It is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change, and has been printed in more than 20 languages. Several editions have come out in the United States, including an updated version published in 2006. His next book, The Age of Missing Information, was published in 1992. It is an account of an experiment: McKibben collected everything that came across the 100 channels of cable tv on the Fairfax, Virginia system (at the time among the nation's largest) for a single day. He spent a year watching the 2,400 hours of videotape, and then compared it to a day spent on the mountaintop near his home. This book has been widely used in colleges and high schools, and was reissued in 2006. McKibben's latest book is entitled, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. Bill currently resides with his wife, writer Sue Halpern, and his daughter, Sophie in Ripton, Vermont. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College. 030 (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality
- DDC/MDS
- 394.2663 — Society, Government, and Culture Customs, etiquette & folklore General customs Special Occasions Holidays Christian holidays Christmas
- LCC
- GT4986 .A1 .M37 — Geography, Anthropology and Recreation Manners and customs (General) Manners and customs (General) Customs relative to public and social life
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 167
- Popularity
- 195,358
- Reviews
- 8
- Rating
- (3.52)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 2
