Andrew Barrow

A Time for Wassailing

Christmas: A Biography

By

Picador 246pp £14.99 order from our bookshop

This light-hearted, scholarly book offers a multifaceted portrait of Christmas over two thousand years. Rich in facts and trivia, it takes us all the way from the birth of Jesus Christ – only mentioned in two of the gospels – up to the consumerist society of today, when Christmas is celebrated all over the globe by millions not even nominally Christian. In the process, it embraces mince pies, mistletoe, the Christmas tree, Christmas cards, carols, candles, declining church attendance and – on a massive scale – food and drink.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'It would be nice to think that women will achieve equal pay in my lifetime, rather than to watch gloomily as stati… ,
    • In 1660, two of the signatories of King Charles I's death warrant fled across the Atlantic to New England. But were… ,
    • Howard Jacobson's sixteenth novel is 'a love story of sorts, one characterised not by physical desire or even conta… ,
    • 'The sudden immersion in the new and unfamiliar can lead people to write with a rare lack of self-consciousness' P… ,
    • 'Pools bend the rules. Clothes slip off, skin glistens, consciousness heightens. A dreamlike scenario unfolds' Jam… ,
    • 'Although he surely didn’t know W H Auden’s theory that every high C proclaims human freedom and our capacity to tr… ,
    • RT : With beginning tomorrow, we've uncovered a 1997 article from the archive reviewing 'Golf Dream… ,
    Follow Us