The Top 40 Traditions Of Christmas

Christmas traditions form the foundation of the holiday season—and this book considers the “story behind the story” for 40 favorite customs. Familiar things like Christmas trees, candy canes, Santa Claus, and lighting displays have little-known histories or deeper meanings that make them worthy of contemplation for those of us who celebrate Christmas as the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Top 40 Traditions of Christmas provides that intriguing information for the most beloved songs, movies, articles, characters, and activities of the season.

Here readers will learn how to bring those warm traditions into their own homes, wherever they live. Included are instructions to make mulled wine, homemade peanut brittle, red candied apples, crisp pepparkakor, lightly browned Swedish meatballs, candles, wreaths, and more. Each recipe and project are accompanied by beautiful full-color photographs. From fashioning centerpieces to baking delicious cookies to hand-making Christmas tree ornaments, this book will inspire readers to rediscover the joys of a Scandinavian Christmas.

Ever wonder where some of our unique and meaningful Christmas traditions come from? Why are red and green popular colors of the season? Why is exchanging gifts a family tradition? Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas reveals the people, places, and events that shaped the best-loved customs of this merriest of holidays and how they all point to Christ. Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas includes insights about: Gift giving Christmas trees Caroling Nativity scenes Yule logs Stockings Advent wreaths Mistletoe Holly, and more! This is the perfect gift to infuse your celebration with spiritual insights, true-life tales, and captivating legends to intrigue you and your family. Bring new luster and depth to your modern traditions while you celebrate Jesus' birth. The traditions of Christmas lend beauty, awe, and hope to the holiday, causing people all over the world to anticipate it with joy. Warm your heart as you rediscover the true and eternal significance of Christmas.

Grandma’s heirloom ornaments. The family carol singalong. Aunt Millie’s fruitcake. We all have our special holiday traditions we practice year in and year out. This book not only embraces these old standbys, but also explores unique rituals celebrated the world over. This heartwarming collection evokes the memories of Christmas past with such stories as: Holly Berry Dreams, in which a young girl hangs holly leaves above the doorway as a sign of better times to come while waiting for her father to return from war PJ Presents, featuring a single mom who enlists her neighbor to leave new pajamas on the front porch every Christmas Eve to surprise her children Too Much Christmas, in which a young mother buys up all the leftover tags on the Giving Tree, leaving her with too many tags and too little money Christmas Diaries, featuring a Scottish family who exchanges a diary every Christmas with their extended family in Germany that details the highlights of the past year With touching stories like these, this book is the perfect gift to commemorate old traditions and create new traditions—for many Christmases to come.

Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan is a study of the history and folklore surrounding Christmas holidays in several countries. It is an amazing collection of Christmas-related traditions from the first introductions of Christianity to the early 20th century. The book covers the history of Christmas as a Christian feast day and how that developed. It also discusses pre-Christian festivals and observances and how a lot of them survived by being given a Christian veneer although the overt paganism disappeared. Clement A. Miles (1881-1918), an author and translator, was a member of the Folk-Lore Society. He had been for many years on T. Fisher Unwin's literary staff and he was the author of an important work: Christmas in Ritual and Tradition. Miles possessed a wide knowledge of European languages, and translated numerous works from French and Italian.

A capacious and stimulating tour de force of the mainstream music industry that reveals the cultural import of even the most deliberately banal performers and songs. Weisbard finds depths in our culture s shallows as he investigates and articulates the cultural construction of such phenomena as Dolly Parton, Elton John, the Isley Brothers, A&M Records, and the rise of radio populism. He further sheds new light on the upheavals in the music industry over the last fifteen years and the implications of them for the audiences the industry has shaped. Each chapter brings us to see afresh precisely that music and those musicians that have become the most familiar and overexposed, by delving into the minutiae of how pop stars and their music were made and framed for repeated consumption in the era dominated by radio."

“Top 40” was the preeminent American radio format of the 1950s and 1960s. Although several radio station group owners offered their own versions of the format, the AM stations owned by Todd Storz and his father were acknowledged as the principal developers of Top 40 radio, and the prime movers in making it a nationwide ratings and revenue success. The Storz Stations in St. Louis, Omaha, New Orleans, Minneapolis–St. Paul, Kansas City, Oklahoma City and Miami are profiled in this book, as are various Storz air personalities and executives. A detailed chapter examines the unique “Storz Station sound,” revealing the complexity of what detractors portrayed as a simplistic format. Another covers Storz advertising in radio trade magazines, which cemented the company’s image as the format’s most successful station group and Top 40 as the dominant programming of the day. There are extensive quotations from the memoirs of several of the founders of the format.