Keeping Christmas: Yuletide Traditions in Norway and the New Land »

Few Norwegian Americans know the origins of the treasured customs they use to celebrate the holiday. Kathleen Stokker's Keeping Christmas: Yuletide Traditions in Norway and the New Land brings home the stories of these practices. Norwegian immigrants carried with them centuries-old folk traditions, which they held especially dear at Christmas time, remembering family members left behind. But in the United States, the immigrants and their descendants met the newly evolving traditions of the commercial American Christmas, a powerful homogenizing force in a nation of immigrants. And the celebration of Christmas in Norway continued to evolve as well, as the holiday - influenced in the twentieth century by American practices - became more child-centered and more commercial. Stokker describes and traces the development of folkways on both sides of the ocean, from their origins to their practice today.