Simplify Your Christmas

The current recession has made changes in the way we live our lives--some of these changes are for the better. As we celebrate the holidays, people seem to be looking at a way to simplify and have a more joyful Christmas. To that end, here are some titles that may help. Hundred Dollar Holiday by Bill McKibben offers some suggestions on how to rethink Christmas, 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 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. 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 one you've known in the past.

Christmas on Jane Street by Billy Romp with Wanda Urbanska tells the story of the Romp family who every year came to New York City from their home in Vermont to sell Christmas trees on Jane Street. They arrive from Vermont the day after Thanksgiving and leave just in time to make it home for Christmas morning--and for a few weeks they transform a corner of the Big Apple into a small village community. For the Romps, the Christmas tree business is also a serious business. A good sales season can make the year for this frugal family. Under tremendous financial pressure this particular year, Billy is counting on his family to pitch in as they always do when he faces an unexpected obstacle. His oldest child and best helper Ellie, sets her sights on attending the extravagant Nutcracker ballet and testing her winds outside her close-knit family. How Billy reconciles Ellie's transformation from a tomboyish female version of himself into a graceful, independent young lady is at first a struggle and later a revelation. Along the way he must learn how to let his daughter dream her own dreams--even when they diverge from his own. In setting her free, Billy learns the ultimate lesson of Christmas.

Elaine St. James is the best-selling author of Simplify Your Christmas: 100 Ways to Reduce the Stress and Recapture the Joy of the Holidays. In this book she shares--in brief, easy-to-read essays--a variety of tips that will help readers deal with the seasonal overload. Her simplifying ideas cover every aspect of holiday hassels; dismantling Christmas past, creating a new approach, gift giving, cooking the Christmas goose, decking the halls, holiday spending and much more. Everyone who adopts at least some of St. James' intelligent approaches to the season will have a happier, healthier Christmas.