Instagram Facebook X-twitter Linkedin

Sign Up

Get the latest ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

All , Coverage

All Crafts, Hobbies & Home Coverage

LifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Fresh spring plantings to spruce up your garden

Review by Kelly Seaman

Learn to Garden: A Practical Introduction to Gardening opens with a pair of chapters titled "The Garden You Want" and "The Garden You've Got," and can equip the new gardener with the skills needed to transform the one into the other. There are answers to questions a novice might be terribly curious about but afraid to ask: Why in the world is she tipping that nursery plant upside down to look at what's inside the pot? Why did he pick this plant instead of that one? How do I plant this tree now that I've brought it home? The book's how-to photo spreads are particularly welcome. Pruning, for example, is often a daunting business even for gardeners with experience. I like the way a series about thinning an overgrown shrub shows a newly vigorous plant in the final "after" shot; it's reassuring to see that it all can come out well in the end. Although revised for North America, Learn to Garden retains its native British accent. Think of it as putting a U.K.-trained expert at the reader's disposal.

PLAN ON IT
Sunset's Big Book of Garden Designs by Marianne Lipanovich offers a fine mix of show and tell. Photographs, watercolor-style illustrations and color-coded planting maps work together with compact commentaries on the designs and annotations to the garden plans. Those notes include plot measurements, plant names and the number of each variety required – all the information you'd need to recreate a design just as the book presents it. But you don't have to stop there. The designs are also well suited to be a springboard for your own reinterpretations of them. That adaptability makes the Big Book of Garden Designs useful for both the newcomer in search of straightforward guidance and the experienced plantsman or plantswoman able to ring the changes on a design.

LOOK AT THIS!
There are few quicker ways to make garden writers cranky than to heap praises on the lovely illustrations that accompany a piece they've written, especially if they didn't even have a hand in composing the captions. With Stafford Cliff's 1000 Garden Ideas: The Best of Everything in a Visual Sourcebook, though, we probably needn't worry about upsetting the author and book designer by privileging the pictures. The hundreds of photographs here, which depict multiple versions of almost any garden element you could imagine, were taken in gardens around the world, nearly all of them by the designer's own camera. That gives the project a remarkable coherence; in spite of its size, this collection couldn't be farther from the jumble of images you might find searching online for ideas for your garden. It's a visual education merely to think through one of Cliff's layouts – added value to a fabulous wish book. I dare you to look a page and not point and say, "That one, please."

REVOLUTIONARY COMPOST
If you think compost is what happens in that pile around the back, Barbara Pleasant and Deborah Martin would like you to reconsider. They're out to encourage you to blend "gardening" and "composting" so thoroughly that the distinction between the two vanishes. The Complete Compost Gardening Guide glories in the details – where to get good sawdust and coffee grounds, the pluses and minuses of a whole range of animal manures, what plants grow best in what sorts of compost – as it provides countless tips for making and using compost in dozens of different ways. Even if you don't sign up for the whole composting lifestyle, there's enough good information here for any gardener to extract a crop of wisdom.

Kelly Seaman will soon be searching for signs of spring in her New Hampshire garden.

Learn to Garden: A Practical Introduction to Gardening opens with a pair of chapters titled "The Garden You Want" and "The Garden You've Got," and can equip the new gardener with the skills needed to transform the one into the other. There are answers to questions a novice might be terribly curious about but afraid […]
LifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

‘Garden’ is a verb

Review by Kelly Seaman

Gordon and Mary Hayward have one of those gardens, the sort you marvel at and wonder how in the world. Their answer, in its simplest form: time and effort. But that's just the point: Maintenance, they begin, is gardening. That spirit fills Tending Your Garden: A Year-Round Guide to Garden Maintenance. Photo essays put you right there with the Haywards and their assistants, documenting step-by-step how to keep a beautiful garden. The book is packed full of professional techniques, the sort of traditional skills handed down from gardener to gardener. To-do lists from their Vermont garden are keyed to seasons (early spring, late fall) as well as to specific months, for ease in adjusting the calendar to your part of the world. Spending time with this book might be the next best thing to digging in alongside the masters themselves.

Gordon and Mary Hayward have one of those gardens, the sort you marvel at and wonder how in the world. Their answer, in its simplest form: time and effort. But that's just the point: Maintenance, they begin, is gardening. That spirit fills Tending Your Garden: A Year-Round Guide to Garden Maintenance. Photo essays put you […]
NonfictionCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Look it up: books with all the answers

Review by Trisha Ping

Not all questions can be put to rest with a Google search. While Internet advances have led many reference publishers to put parts of their guides on the web, there's a certainty to looking something up in a nice, heavy book the answer just seems to have more weight. This fall brings important updates to some of the reference industry's biggest contenders.

A matter of style

The University of Chicago Press has just released a new edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, the book that sets style guidelines for writers across America. For the first time, the editors of the manual consulted a panel of advisors, including editors at other university presses, launching detailed debates over even the most minute formatting questions. The result is the most extensive revision of the Chicago Manual in 20 years, and only the 15th in the guide's 97-year history. The new edition includes complete information on how to format journals, press releases and electronic publications (previous editions focused mainly on the traditional book), as well as a comprehensive chapter on English grammar. Other shocking developments: the preferred abbreviation for state names is now the two-letter postal code (e.g., AL) instead of the longer traditional abbreviations (e.g., Ala.), and the date format has changed from day-month-year to the much more prevalent month-day-year.

Documentation counts

Joseph Gibaldi and Phyllis Franklin's MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers is a time-tested resource for documenting sources. This year, the publication aimed at high school and college students releases its sixth edition. In addition to the usual updates of citation examples, the new edition offers a chapter on plagiarism, including advice on how to avoid unwittingly committing this offense (a section some of today's top authors may need to consult). There's also expanded information on the ever-changing field of electronic publications and a revised punctuation section.

For dictionary devotees

Those with a thirst for words will drink up Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. This 11th edition of America's best-selling dictionary has been 10 years in the making. Paired with a CD-ROM for easy use while working on a computer, the 11th edition contains 10,000 new entries, including "phat," "Botox," "psyops," "comb-over" and other words culled from our modern vernacular. Need additional proof that this isn't your grandma's dictionary? Each Collegiate Dictionary purchased includes a user code granting a one-year subscription to the online version of the dictionary. The thoughtfully designed site allows users to look up words, bookmark them for future reference and e-mail definitions to friends. It even includes pronunciation for more difficult entries. At last the ease of the Internet combined with the authority of a trusted name in reference.

Not all questions can be put to rest with a Google search. While Internet advances have led many reference publishers to put parts of their guides on the web, there's a certainty to looking something up in a nice, heavy book the answer just seems to have more weight. This fall brings important updates to […]
NonfictionCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Kenneth T. Jackson, editor

Interview by Alden Mudge

It’s not often that an encyclopedia is a popular success. “Usually you’ll see encyclopedias in multivolumes and priced for many hundreds of dollars, and clearly the marketing plan is to sell to libraries,” says Kenneth T. Jackson, editor in chief of The Encyclopedia of New York City during a call that catches him in San Francisco as he is heading home from Shanghai, where he has been during sabbatical leave from Columbia University.

But from the day in 1982, when Edward Tripp, the late, great head of Yale University Press, drove down from New Haven to discuss an idea for a book about New York with Jackson, a prominent urban historian with near-encyclopedic knowledge of the history of New York City, the plan was to create a book for the general reader that was both authoritative and quirky. The idea, Jackson recalls, was “to put it all in one volume, make it relatively inexpensive, and see if it would sell.”

The first edition of The Encyclopedia of New York City, published in 1995, has gone through seven printings, sold tens of thousands of copies, and spawned a host of imitators in cities and regions around the country. President Clinton took it along as a gift for his hosts during a trip to China. It was part of the bet between mayors when the New York Giants played the Baltimore Ravens in the Super Bowl. As reference books go, it has been a smash hit.

Another measure of its success are the hundreds and hundreds of letters Jackson has received from readers—New Yorkers and non-New Yorkers alike—offering opinions and suggestions about the book. Some requested factual corrections—“it’s on the northwest corner not the southwest corner.” Some suggested additions. Some excoriated Jackson for omissions. Joe DiMaggio, for instance, is mentioned a number of times in the first edition, but he doesn’t have an entry all his own. What? No entry for the Yankee Clipper? “I was hammered for leaving out Joe D,” says Jackson ruefully.

Well, DiMaggio fans, Yankee fans and New York City fans can rejoice. Joe DiMaggio has his own entry in the extraordinarily appealing new edition of The Encyclopedia of New York City. And so do hundreds of other people, places and events.

“Generally, you had to be dead to be in the first edition,” Jackson says. “Now we have more living people. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and the Subway Hero [Wesley Autrey, a construction worker who leapt onto the tracks in 2007 to save a 19-year-old NY Film Academy student who had fallen after a seizure], for example. We have several entries on the World Trade Center 9/11 attack. There are a lot of things like the E-ZPass and the MetroCard that didn’t exist when the first edition came out and which are huge issues today. Clearly one of the biggest stories, maybe the biggest story in New York in the last 20 years, has been the spectacular decline in crime. I mean 75 percent. It’s not just a few percent; it’s massive. And that has happened mostly since the first edition appeared.”

The new edition is more than 200 pages longer than the first edition, contains over 5,000 entries and more than 700 luminous photos, maps, charts and illustrations. “Amazingly they [Yale University Press] are holding the price at the same place it was 15 years ago,” Jackson says of the $65 book. “I still don’t know how it’s as inexpensive as it is.”

According to Vadim Staklo, Yale University Press’ in-house editor on the project, Jackson himself played a major role in keeping the price of the new edition down. “Ken Jackson raised a significant amount of money, which for the most part went into editorial development. That’s where the huge cost is. He paid for permissions to use photographs. He paid for the hours that his team of editors devoted to this project. He paid for the compensation to the contributors.”

That may be more inside baseball than even the most avid Joe DiMaggio fan might like, but the hard work of putting together a 1560-page encyclopedia lies in ceaseless attention to detail. Working within a editorial framework he established in the first edition, Jackson orchestrated the work of roughly 60 assistant editors and 800 contributors, many of them prominent scholars and writers who, at 10 cents a word, wrote mostly for love of the project. “You’d have to live on a pretty limited budget to make a living writing for an encyclopedia,” Jackson says wryly.

The editorial team reviewed and revamped most of the entries from the first edition, added hundreds and hundreds of new entries, and removed some outdated entries. “We got rid of entries on things like law firms, which we found people didn’t look up. They changed so fast that people were really using the Internet for that.”

And speaking of the Internet, Jackson says, “The difference between an encyclopedia like this and the Internet is that when people go to the Internet to look something up they only get what they’re looking up. But so much of what you find in this book is serendipity. Say you’re looking up Sandy Kofax and near it is an entry on the Ku Klux Klan. Who thinks of the Ku Klux Klan in New York City? But there it is. There are so many things like that throughout the book, where you look up one thing and your eye falls on another.”

Jackson’s own eyes have fallen on every single word of the new edition, a prodigious accomplishment in and of itself. He has also written numerous entries for the book, drawing on his vast knowledge of the city after years of exploring it and teaching its history. For decades, Jackson has taught a course on the history of New York City that includes field trips by bus and subway to the far reaches of the city and an immensely popular all-night bike ride from Morningside Heights to Brooklyn. The class still usually draws more than 300 students. “The university prides itself on small classes, so it doesn’t really like the fact that it’s so large,” Jackson says. “But it’s a very large class. It’s huge.” Big and popular, much like The Encyclopedia of New York City itself.

“So many people have been through the New York City grinder,” Jackson says. “They come as a young person, they leave or retire and now live in Las Vegas or Florida or Vermont or wherever but they retain that feeling of having lived in New York. They know where the D train goes and the Shuttle. They know all these things and they feel a little piece of New York will always be inside them. That’s why I think this sells well even outside the city.”

After living and working for 42 years in New York, Jackson still retains his Tennessee drawl. But when he is enthusiastic, as he is about The Encyclopedia of New York City, he talks a mile a minute, like any good New Yorker. At the end of conversation, however, Jackson slows down to make a point. “Obviously you can say more or write more specialized books about this city. But there is no other book that does what this one does.”

And that, dear reader, is the unvarnished truth.

It’s not often that an encyclopedia is a popular success. “Usually you’ll see encyclopedias in multivolumes and priced for many hundreds of dollars, and clearly the marketing plan is to sell to libraries,” says Kenneth T. Jackson, editor in chief of The Encyclopedia of New York City during a call that catches him in San […]
LifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Ty Pennington

Interview by Stephanie Swilley

ÔTrading Spaces’ hunk hammers out a home repair guide Ty Pennington, the handyman heartthrob from the hit television show Trading Spaces, is looking for a little respect. He’s an adorable goofball, one of People magazine’s sexiest bachelors, and he keeps millions of women glued to the tube. But the guy famous for filling out a tool belt wants to do a little redesign on his own image.

“People don’t realize that I’m more of a designer than a carpenter,” he says. “I’m a cross between Martha Stewart and MacGyver, so I’m going to change my name to Stewart MacGyver.” Obviously Ty doesn’t take himself too seriously, and the wacky sensibility in his new book, Ty’s Tricks, was in full force in a recent BookPage interview. Peppering the conversation with “dude” and “awesome!” the Atlanta native with a surfer vocabulary shows an enthusiasm for home repair that’s infectious. In fact, we spent five minutes on the merits of a “killer toilet” from American Standard called the Tower of Power. “This thing is so bad ass,” he says. “I’m telling ya man, it’s incredible.” After reining in Ty’s tangents, we got back to the book he describes as “a home-work handbook for screw-it and do-it-yourselfers” that embraces the “cheap and easy” mantra. The first chapter shows off Ty’s renovation of his own home, a process that cost him a mere $10,000. A real fixer-upper, the design challenge on a shoestring budget brought out Ty’s talents and creativity, and the designer relishes letting readers into his house for a change.

“People will finally get to see me in a different light, not just the carpenter who makes you laugh. It’s more like, wow, this guy has some style and knows what he’s doing.” Even the Trading Spaces cast of designers was impressed with his work, Ty says with satisfaction.

The results are irreverent kitchen lights made out of plungers, a salad bowl sink and a faux bamboo forest but ingenious. Before-and-after shots show the amazing results of the modernized bachelor pad (along with a full page of the sudsy stud in the shower). The self-described “penny-pinching freak” loves “making something for nothing and making it really special. What I do is make crap, craptastic. Let’s be honest.” He describes his furniture style as “modern primitive, which is an oxymoron, which is so much like me. Really modern clean lines but it’s made in a primitive way.” His furniture has an Asian minimalist feel with a touch of Swiss Family Robinson thrown in. “It’s funny, in my brain I think I see things very simply, but I like to be surrounded by chaos at the same time. I’m kind of like the Zen eye in the middle of the hurricane.” Chapter two of the book gets into nitty-gritty plans for eclectic projects, which Ty says was key because “so many people come up to me and say, ÔDude, I hate your guts. My wife loves you. Just kidding. Dude, you gotta come over and build us some furniture.'” That house call isn’t likely to happen considering this carpenter’s busy schedule. Ty just finished taping 10 new Trading Spaces episodes; he also makes and sells incense holders and such on his website (www.

Tythehandyguy.com) and runs a furniture company called FU. Ty’s Tricks fills the gap where the show leaves off.

“You get such a positive reaction and realize that people are actually trying [to build] some of the stuff,” says Ty, but “there’s a lot on [Trading Spaces] that they don’t show. I guess they just find it boring or it gets edited out. And there’s so many tricks that I know.” Building a backyard treehouse as a kid started Ty’s passion for home repair, but he never expected to turn his handyman skills into a career. “It’s just something I’ve always fallen back on,” he says. “I never really meant for [carpentry] to be my long-term career goal.” He studied graphic design for a couple of years but quit to model in Japan. After 10 years of globetrotting, he moved back to Atlanta and started renovating a warehouse with his brother. Exactly one year later the call came for a crazy carpenter for a new TV show, and Ty knew it would be the perfect job. He loves showing off his creative side and at the same time being “my crazy little self.” Ty may be a ham, but he knows his place on the show. “I have to just kind of shut up and build whatever,” he says, while conceding that “if they’re going to do a room that’s completely hideous, by all means, I’m really going to help them out to make sure they never do that again.” Those “what were they thinking?” designs have helped Trading Spaces attract millions of viewers, earn an Emmy nomination and spawn a publishing powerhouse. So which of the show’s designers would Ty let loose in his home? “None of the above, just because I know them all too well. . . . But I guarantee that some would have to stick with yard maintenance.” “Hildi [Santo-Tomas] has definitely got a creative gene in her that’s insane. What’s great is that she knows it’s a TV show, so she pushes the envelope. You can’t keep doing the same room every time, like some designers; you gotta branch out and do some crazy stuff.” Ty may know what makes good TV, but fortunately his book focuses on the practical. “I want everything to be a project that you can put together yourself and you can change depending on your tastes, so that everyone can become part of the creative solution. That’s the only way I stay happy.” Is it just a matter of time before the master of beer budget transformations becomes the star of Trading Spaces II? “Who knows,” Ty says, “maybe I’ll become a designer on a show like that, and instead of $1,000, we’ll do it for $100.”

ÔTrading Spaces’ hunk hammers out a home repair guide Ty Pennington, the handyman heartthrob from the hit television show Trading Spaces, is looking for a little respect. He’s an adorable goofball, one of People magazine’s sexiest bachelors, and he keeps millions of women glued to the tube. But the guy famous for filling out a […]
LifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Grace Bonney: The design revolution is at hand

Interview by Cat, Deputy Editor

It all began in 2004—a writer in Brooklyn created a blog to fill with her design ideas, never expecting it to become an online sensation. Today, Design*Sponge is one of the most popular sources of DIY inspiration.

It was only a matter of time before Grace Bonney, the genius behind D*S, released her first book, Design*Sponge at Home, which, like the blog, is filled with gorgeous photographs and easy instructions. With Bonney’s brilliant uses of space, color and texture, every room has the chance to be a showstopper.

What is your favorite aspect of the blog come to life in the book?
I really love the way we’ve managed to cross-reference so many different homes, skills, styling tips and projects in one book. For me, the best part of a blog is how you can link to so many different pieces of information in one post, so I wanted to find a way to carry that through to the book, and I think we did. I love that you can open the book to a home tour and then flip to different pages to learn how to make something you see in the home, learn more about its history, or see a flower arrangement inspired by the home’s color palette.

What was the biggest challenge in moving from a blog format to a book format?
For me it was most difficult to make the edits. I’m so used to having an infinite amount of room to publish online, so having to narrow things down (and lose some really special pieces that just wouldn’t fit) was a real learning experience for me. But I’m glad I did–in the end it really helped me solidify what Design*Sponge’s style and aesthetic is all about.

How did you choose which projects went into the book?
Just like the site, I chose based purely on my gut. I looked for homes, projects and makeovers that grabbed me and made me smile, want to learn more or inspired the best kind of jealousy. I wanted people to have those same gut level responses every time they turned the page.

I looked for homes, projects and makeovers that grabbed me and made me smile, want to learn more or inspired the best kind of jealousy.

In the book’s foreword, Jonathan Adler calls D*S a revolution. Do you consider your blog and book a part of a revolution?
That was an incredibly kind comment and kicked off a serious bout of blushing and appreciation on my end. I don’t often sit back and look at the work I do at D*S, but I think if I step back for a moment and look at our contribution to the community, I think our team has done something really special. There’s been a huge groundswell of change within the design (and publishing) community in the last 10 years and I’m proud to have played a part in it.

How has Brooklyn shaped D*S?
Brooklyn informs everything I do on a day-to-day basis. It’s the place I call home and the energy that exists here is hard to find elsewhere. People (artists and art-appreciators alike) here are so driven to follow their passion it’s hard not to get caught up in that and really follow your heart. Without that sort of community around me, I’m not sure how hard I would have pushed to do all the projects I have over the past seven years. But when you’re surrounded with so much talent it’s the best sort of inspiration to do your best.

What is the most daunting part of DIY, and what advice can you give inexperienced DIY-ers?
I think DIY projects can seem daunting when you’ve never really thrown yourself in and gotten your hands dirty. But it’s really about pushing past that fear and not being afraid to make mistakes. My advice is to spend as much time as it takes to set up a clean work space, get your supplies in order and prepped and clean as you work. Just like cooking, when your space is clear and your mise en place are right at your fingertips, things flow easily.

What is the one thing every room must have?
Texture. I always feel sad when I walk into a space and everything is cold and smooth. I want to feel some sort of warmth in a space to bring it to life and texture does that in a snap. A quilted throw, a knitted pillow or a great wool rug can really add dimension to a space without spending a ton of money.

If you could move into anyone’s home, who’s would you move into?
I’d move into one of the many Neutra homes in Silverlake (Los Angeles)—anyone’s will do. I love the way he integrated moving exterior walls into each space so the outdoors and indoors blended seamlessly.

What was your best ever yard sale/thrift store find?
Our old TV credenza was a serious online thrift score. It was part of an estate sale on eBay and was originally a $1,000+ piece, but I got it for $200. I sold it when we moved earlier this year, but it was one of my favorite pieces of furniture for years.

What’s next for you and for the blog?
I’m most excited to hit the road for the book tour! We so rarely get to break out from behind our laptops and meet people, so this is a huge treat for us. To interact with and meet our readers is going to be the biggest reward for all the hard work we put into the book.

Grace Bonney answered some questions about the little design blog that changed everything.
NonfictionHistoryCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Judith Flanders

Interview by Lily McLemore

The Christmas trees, the feasting, the stockings hanging over the fireplace . . . It’s all pretty standard seasonal fare. But where exactly did our beloved Christmas traditions come from? Historian and bestselling author Judith Flanders explores the unexpected sources of the winter holiday in her fascinating and festive Christmas: A Biography. We asked Flanders a few questions about what she discovered during her research. 

I think my favorite tradition I learned about from this book are the Bean Kings, the lucky recipients of a slice of cake with a bean baked into it who were celebrated in medieval Europe and England. Bean kings sound like they were the life of the party! What was your favorite Christmas tradition that you discovered during research?
It probably had to be that boring gifts of underwear have a long history. In 1805, on the great Lewis and Clark expedition, the first expedition to map out the western part of the USA, Captain Lewis gave Lieutenant Clark ‘a present of a Fleeshe Hoserey vest draws & Socks’, with a ‘pr Mockerson’: fleece hosiery, or stockings, and a vest, underpants, socks and moccasins, or slippers.

How much influence do Victorian traditions, rooted in the writings of Washington Irving and Charles Dickens, hold on our current ideas about Christmas?
Victorian traditions did make a lot of difference to the holiday: In particular, I explain in the book why I think it is likely that Washington Irving ‘invented’ Santa Claus, rather than drawing on an old Dutch tradition, as he claimed to have done. Dickens, in turn, read Irving. But the most important Victorian elements were not seasonal. It was railways, urbanization, the press and the mass market, all of which were invented, or flourished, in the 19th century, that took older seasonal traditions and either elaborated them, or reshaped them for the new century. This was what created the Christmas we know today.

Why do you think Christmas is so wrapped up in collective nostalgia, a hearkening back to “the good old days”?
Ultimately, my research showed that Christmas isn’t so much wrapped up in nostalgia, as nostalgia is a major part of the holiday. It is a way of creating a collective illusion that life was once better—an illusion we need, one that lets us believe we can get back to that state once more. Because Christmas has always been about nostalgia, and it was never better at some mythical ‘before’ date. In the 4th century, only 30 years after the first recorded Christmas, an archbishop was already preaching against holiday gluttony. And by 1616, a character in a play was looking back to the good old days when Christmas was really Christmas, nothing like the modern day, he said.

Sounds like (over)eating and (over)drinking have been a part of Christmas since Roman times, before it was even called Christmas. What was your favorite Christmas delicacy you found while researching, or what’s your personal favorite holiday treat?
Actually my favourite thing was not a delicacy at all, but perhaps an anti-delicacy. I’ve always thought Christmas pudding was disgusting, greasy and rich and—well, just ick. So I was pleased to find an 18th-century Swiss traveller who was horrified when he tasted the British ancestor to Christmas pudding, then called plum broth, or plum porridge. He was adamant: you had to be English to like it.

You grew up mostly in Canada, but now live in London. Do you see any major differences between the Christmases of Canada and Britain?
I’m sort of a cheat when it comes to Christmas in life as opposed to on the page. I’m Jewish, and my family only made the most token gestures towards Christmas—we had a tree once or twice, I think, but that was it. So the differences I see are mostly from the outside: It seems to me that in Britain there is more emphasis on the Christmas dinner part of the day, in North America, more on the tree and the decorations. But the one thing I found researching was, it’s not just every country that does it differently: Every family does it differently, and every family believes that their way is the only right way.

As your book makes clear, Christmas has evolved a lot since its roots in Roman revelry. Do you see any transformations for the holiday on the horizon?
Well, in some ways I don’t agree with your question. I think the details of the holiday have changed, because the world has changed, but I think the holiday has from the start been about consumption, and it still is. Before the mass market, and industrialization, most of the consumption was food and drink, while now it’s consumer products. But it’s still consumption.

From carols, which originated in the 16th century, and the Nutcracker ballet to It’s a Wonderful Life and Nat King Cole’s “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,” the creative types have always found inspiration in Christmas. What’s your favorite Christmas-themed creative work?
I’ve been a ballet-goer for decades, so my least favourite Christmas pastime is The Nutcracker: I’ve just seen it too often. And I was amazed to realize that Handel’s Messiah was not, until the 20th century, a Christmas tradition at all, but an Easter one. If I had only one Christmas creative work, though, it might just be James Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life: I don’t think you can have too many seasonal weepies.

As you point out, Christmas means many things to many different people, from a time of religious celebration to a time for commercial gain. What does it mean for you? Did your views change while writing this book?
I think my great realization when researching the subject was to realize how miraculously chameleon-like Christmas was: how it could be so many different things in so many places to so many different people. That might just be my favorite.

Any Christmas festivities that you’re looking forward to celebrating yourself?
Would I sound too Scrooge-like if I said it was closing my front door and staying home and not talking to anyone? Bah, humbug.

The Christmas trees, the feasting, the stockings hanging over the fireplace . . . It’s all pretty standard Christmas fare. But where exactly did our beloved seasonal traditions come from? Historian and bestselling author Judith Flanders explores the unexpected sources of the winter holiday in her fascinating and festive Christmas: A Biography. We asked Flanders a few questions about what she discovered during her research. 

Sign Up

Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.

Sign up now

Recent Reviews

All Reviews

Author Interviews

More Interviews

Recent Features

All Features