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The Christmas spirit: In the U.S., pure tinsel

Christmas and the wealth of 'Tinsel'

Date published: 11/8/2009

DALLAS

It examines what Christmas means to contemporary Americans through the eyes of three families in Frisco, Texas, which is like the rest of America only more so. Stuever says he explored the question: "Who are we now that we live in this world where so many people for so long had unlimited access to just about anything they wanted?"

It's enough to make one long for the caves of the ascetic Desert Fathers, or at least to get sozzled with grinchy atheist Christopher Hitchens. Stuever is both a magnificent prose stylist and a compelling storyteller. But the writer's account of our gaudy Christmas present recalls Trollope's withering judgment of Disraeli's novels: "The glory has been the glory of pasteboard, and the wealth has been a wealth of tinsel." The book doesn't judge; it reveals. And what it shows is that people who throw themselves with such severe gusto into celebrating Christmas, especially through the communal ritual of shopping, miss the point of the thing entirely.

"Tinsel" follows its families through a trio of Christmas seasons. One couple, Jeff and Bridgette Trykoski, are locally famous for their spectacular home Christmas lights display. But Jeff's obsession with having the biggest Yuletide lollapalooza in town can't disguise the fact that he makes his mother cry by refusing to observe Christmas with his extended family. ("We've explained it to my parents over and over. We have to be at our house for Christmas, because of the lights.")

Another family, the Parnells, spend Christmases dealing with the seasonal tornado that is Tammie--wife, mother, and Tasmanian devil of decoration. She works herself silly prettifying other people's McMansions for the holidays, so much so that her husband feels she neglects their family. For Tammie, it's all about a search for the "total moment," the recovery of an episode from a childhood Christmas that lives in her poetic memory as timeless and perfect. She's so busy trying to re-create this lost Rosebud by expenditure of cash that she's blind to the life she actually leads.

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Date published: 11/8/2009