'Tinsel' Author Finds America's Christmas Present

To Hank Steuver, there is no bigger story than Christmas. Stuever, who writes for the Washington Post's Style section, has spent the last twenty years of his life looking at America through what he calls the "point of purchase." Mega-wedding, discount funerals -- all of life's big moments, the beliefs we hold dear, and how we spend our money to express them.

It was almost inevitable that he would eventually write "Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present," which chronicles the holiday through a mix of personal journalism, historical research, and economic data. "I just felt like Christmas intersects all the big subjects -- God, family, shopping, the United States, television," he tells Holidash. "It's all there."

Stuever's quest to capture the true spirit of a modern Christmas led him to Frisco, Texas, about as far away from George Bailey and Bedford Falls he could get. He wanted to avoid the idyllic, stereotypical Christmas scene of neat piles of snow in the street, quaint bergs with carolers and mom and pop storefronts.

There was little chance of snow in Frisco, a place where Stuever says there are seven million square feet of chain retail stores in one particular square mile. "In our Christmas mythology, we haven't really made room for Best Buy," he says. "We haven't included that as a valuable, authentic part of our Christmas. I was looking for that part of the country, which is most of the country, which is people living outside of bigger cities in former farm towns, which are now shopping towns, McMansion towns."

Stuever spent seven months living in the expanding suburb of Frisco in 2006, and made 12 trips back over the next couple of years. There he volunteered to help supermom Tammie Parnell decorate big, relatively new Texas homes for Christmas, a side business she calls Two Elves with a Twist. He watches Jeff and Bridgette Trykoski build a light display for their house that attracts constant traffic every year, and that lands Jeff a job designing a display for a shopping center.

And he starts the whole trip, appropriately enough, on Black Friday, as single mother Caroll Cavazos camps out in front of Best Buy, ready to start Christmas shopping for her family. He gets to know all of them along the way, why Tammie is driven to find the perfect decorations for each home, how the Trykoskis set out a food donation box to encourage charity amongst the gawkers, and how Cavazos strives to help everyone, except perhaps herself, at Christmas.

From the time he first started the book to his last research trips for it in 2008, the economy tumbled. Stuever said he had a hunch that things would slow down, but he didn't want to write a book from a pure economic perspective. "I wanted to do this book about Christmas and make it a personal book about people living in this economy," he says. "I didn't know that it would change. I do, in the acknowledgments, thank capitalism and the economy for taking a little bit of a tailspin, which made this story so much more interesting."

There's also the historical element, covering Christian and pagan traditions, how marketing and writing brought a Victorian ideal of Christmas to America, and the web of Christmas icons created in the past 200 years. "It's a complicated thing, and it surprised me that Christmas was never perfect for anybody," says Stuever. "Christmas has always been a complicated, sometimes violent, sometimes deranged, but always joyful, but then, just as quickly, always a sad time for people."

The mad throngs outside of the malls and shopping centers fit surprisingly well into that the historical perspective Stuever found. "I think what happens on Black Friday is totally like what Christmas was millennia ago," he says. "It was more like Halloween or Mardi Gras even. It's partying in the streets, drunk, drunk, drunk, wild, crazy, pushing, shoving."

Stuever wound up giving up his own Christmas with his partner, Michael, to write the book. His family is scattered around the country, he says, and he would usually spend time with Michael and Michael's family. His search for Christmas present led him to the realization that he needs to find his own, personal Christmas tradition with Michael.

"I have spent two decades now following other people's passions and writing about them," he says, "and I failed to really develop any sort of tradition or hobby or things I always do every December. I can really take it or leave it, and I should not leave it, I should take it."

Stuever says he found there is no real right or wrong way to celebrate Christmas. But he will offer a couple of guidelines for a less stressful, more personal holiday. "Anything people can do to break the spell of 'we always do it this way,' and to hold onto the traditions that they really love instead of just doing things to please other people," he says, "that's probably the most right way. And it's probably the most impossible thing for almost anyone who knows anything about Christmas."