Mike,
That's a little like comparing a scholarly treatise on life in neolithic
times with the old Reiner & Brooks "2000 Year Old Man" routine with ("We
spoke Rock." "Really, could you give me an example of Rock?" "Yeah. 'Hey
you, don't throw that Rock at me'.") Of course, Mike has never had a
cynical thought about Christmas, or (more to the point of this
admittedly trite Gladwell piece) about the kind of overly obvious
research conclusions that psychologists sometimes like to dress up as
being Scientific Discoveries. :-)
Chris
--
Christopher D. Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Canada
416-736-2100 ex. 66164
chri...@yorku.ca
http://www.yorku.ca/christo/
==========================
Mike Palij wrote:
> On Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:52:48 -0800, Allen Esterson wrote:
>
>> Malcolm Gladwell discusses Christmas with Craig Brown.
>>
>> http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/12/gladwell-200912
>>
>
> Perhaps what I like least about Gladwell's writing is when he comes
> off like a snarky intellectual version of Larry King, as he does in this
> throwaway article. A greater investment of time but with a much greater
> payoff would be Stephen Nissenbaum's "The Battle for Christmas"
> which provides an interesting history of the holiday from the setting
> of the date of Christman in 400 AD, its manifestation as "misrule" and
> rejection by some Christian sects such as the Puritains (Christmas
> was briefly legally banned in Massachusetts), and its reinvention by
> a number of New Yorkers into a child centered holiday (with borrowing
> from other cultures, especially German) that we continue to celebrate
> today. Nissenbaum is a professor of history which might be interpreted
> as implying that perhaps he has some idea of what he is talking about
> though, clearly, simply being a professor (as in Pinker's case) might
> imply to some the opposite.
>
> Nissenbaum's book is available in snippet view on books.google.com, see:
> http://books.google.com/books?id=-q6BAAAAMAAJ&dq=christmas+history+nissenbaum&q=contents#search_anchor
>
> It also available in book form on Amazon (sadly, there is no version
> for Kindle gnawers or Kindle nibblers):
> http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Christmas-Stephen-Nissenbaum/dp/0679740384/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258290808&sr=1-4
> or
> http://tinyurl.com/yzsa2vz
>
> -Mike Palij
> New York University
> m...@nyu.edu
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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