($24, hardcover, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 316 pages)
BY DAWN BAUMGARTNER VAUGHAN
dvaughan@heraldsun.com; 419-6563
Every year, a stocking full of Christmas-themed books decorate bookstore shelves in hopes of being plucked, wrapped and given in yuletide merriment.
There are the usual suspects -- authors who succeeded with a Christmas book one year keep coming back with slightly different takes on the holiday each December. This goes for both fiction and nonfiction. But sometimes a book comes along that is insightful, well-reported, funny and a reminder of how we each decide what Christmas is really all about.
An engaging read and look inside American life at Christmas can be found in "Tinsel" by Hank Stuever. The Washington Post features writer spent three Christmases in Frisco, Texas, and shares three very different ways of celebrating Noel.
There's Tammie, the overachieving Christmas decorator of mansions and McMansions, outfitting homes in holiday glory for those who want twinkling perfection without the effort. There are Jeff and Bridgette, the young couple whose spectacular light display draws thousands of visitors, and becomes Jeff's obsession with making it bigger, brighter and better. And there is Caroll, a single mother whom Stuever first meets on Black Friday outside Best Buy in the pre-dawn wait.
The Texans let Stuever into their homes and their lives, and in turn the author gives us a window into the suburban, retail-driven world of 2006 development. But Stuever is also there in Christmas 2007 and Christmas 2008, when economic realities attempt to hit even the big box booming world of Texas. "Tinsel" shows that everything really is bigger in Texas -- not just the houses and blue sky, but the shopping, the decorating, the shopping, the light displays, and, again, the shopping. Stuever keeps his snarkiness minimal, allowing readers to decide whether to understand or mock the retail obsessed Frisco residents. Because we can see ourselves in them, too.
