The Public Work of Christmas

This multidisciplinary and transnational-focused edited volume by Pamela Klassen and Monique Scheer offers a thought-provoking and sometimes playful exploration into the ways that “people embrace, resist, and live with Christmas in multicultural spaces shaped by peculiarly Christian affordances” (10). Against the backdrop of belonging and difference, two concepts bind this book together: “religion” and “culture.” As demonstrated in a Canadian school, support or opposition for saying “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” is fraught with assumptions of religious or cultural meaning, depending on the group in question. For leaders of cathedrals in England, they must confront annual services and offerings with both religious and material/secular purposes in mind, along with how “consumers” interpret their episodic appearances in cathedrals. The analysis offered helps scholars to wade through the complexity and significance of meaning-making in society. The authors wisely shed light on how Christmas highlights both sameness and difference. In Germany, Christmas lights, carols, trees, and baking are framed—often by the middle or upper class—as symbolizing and fostering belonging and “peace on earth” among all. These “common” social narratives of belonging, real or imagined, are also utilized during times of war, to link soldiers afar to their families and country back home. And yet a far more discussed theme is how Christmas magnifies inequalities. Isaac Weiner’s chapter encourages readers to reimagine a multicultural Whoville (from “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”). Might the Grinch stand in opposition to the inference that the spirit of Christmas is shared by all? Extending this question to multi-religious contexts, consider the religious sounds that are and are not heard in public spaces (e.g., church bells versus the Muslim call to prayer), and what they reveal about who is included or excluded. These points of dissention cut in other directions too, where those previously accustomed to more social power perceive that power to be slipping away. This is well captured by Monique Scheer’s analysis of the “war on Christmas” in the United States where some boycott Starbucks for not invoking Christmas language or symbols in their marketing. These and other chapters push readers to think about social assumptions behind Christmas in new and unfamiliar ways.

Aesthetics · Art · Literature · Media studies · Multiculturalism · Narrative · Opposition (politics) · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Gender Studies · Law · Media, Religion, Digital Communication · Religion and Society Interactions