Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present »

HANK STUEVER is an award-winning pop-culture writer for the Washington Post's style section. He is the author of Off Ramp, an essay collection, and has appeared on Today, The View, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and National Public Radio.

In Tinsel, Hank Stuever turns his unerring eye for the idiosyncrasies of modern life to Frisco, Texas—a suburb at once all-American and completely itself—to tell the story of the nation’s most over-the-top celebration: Christmas.

Stuever’s tale begins on the blissful easy-credit dawn of Black Friday, as he jostles for bargains among the crowds at the big-box stores. From there he follows Frisco’s true believers as they navigate through three years of holiday drama. Tammie Parnell is the proprietor of “Two Elves with a Twist,” a company that decks the halls of other people’s McMansions. Jeff and Bridgette Trykoski spend eleven months preparing the visible-from-space, awe-inspiring light display they stage on their lawn each December. And single mother Caroll Cavazos, a devout churchgoer, hopes that the life-affirming moments of the season can transcend her everyday struggles. Tinsel is a humane, revealing, and very funny portrait of one community’s quest to discover a more perfect holiday amidst the frenzied, mega-churchy, shoparific world of Christmas.

The Washington Post - Bryan Burrough

This is the consummate "Young Writer Discovers Middle America" book (or rediscovers, given that Stuever appears to be from Oklahoma, poor guy). By and large Stuever pulls it off, in part because he eschews (most) condescension and embraces these happy, bustling Christianized Texans for what they really are, not what he thinks they ought to be.

Best Buy (A Prologue) 1

Fake Is Okay Here

1 Target 11

2 Town & Kountry 17

3 It's Bazaar 36

4 There Glows the Neighborhood 42

5 Anthropologie 64

6 Christmas Caroll 78

7 Unto Us 91

The Gap (A Slide Show) 105

Manger Babies, Angel Trees & Tiny Tims

8 Mary, Did You Know? 115

9 Restoration Hardware 135

10 Poverty Barn 149

11 The Neediest 164

12 The Total Moment 178

13 Hallmark 199

Creche

14 Things Remembered 211

15 The Pageant 227

16 Wrapping 239

American Greetings (An Interlude) 257

Half Off

17 Wal-Mart 263

18 The Epiphany Party 278

Baby, Please Come Home

19 The Container Store 287

20 Hot Topic 296

Circuit City (Some Endings) 300

Acknowledgments 317

Sources, Bibliography, and Some Other Stocking Stuffers 321