Hundred Dollar Holiday

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A book review of Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case for a More Joyful Christmas by Bill McKibben

A book review of Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case for a More Joyful Christmas by Bill McKibben

Stars: ***

Simon & Schuster 1998
Christmas
95 pages

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

Summary: Too many people have come to dread the approach of the holidays, a season that should — and can — be the most relaxed, intimate, joyful, and spiritual time of the year. In this book, Bill McKibben offers some suggestions on how to rethink Christmastime, 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. McKibben shows us how to return to a simpler and more enjoyable holiday.
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 ones you’ve known in the past.

Hundred Dollar Holiday

I picked this book up at a used book store a few years back but didn’t get around to reading it till now. It’s from 1998 although I believe there is a slightly newer version out too.

The book is a little outdated but the message rings true. The author tells how Christmas started and how it evolved into what it is now (or at least in 1998.) He explains how Jesus was not born December 25 but how the his birth was celebrated during that time to encourage the Pagans to follow Jesus as they celebrated Yule around this time.

He goes quickly through time (because it’s a short book.) His focus is on spending a $100 for the holidays although he says you can come up with your own amount if that doesn’t work. The point though is to make homemade gifts and use the money you do spend wisely. Christmas should be about Jesus if your Christian. Even if you’re not, it should be about family, peace, love and joy, not items.

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About Kathleen

I've been a nonfiction lover for as long as I can remember. I love children's nonfiction as well and love to share my knowledge and the books I gained them from, with the world. I wish more people would give nonfiction a chance.