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Summary: Elaine, why do you still do Christmas at all?
Review: Bah Humbug. Ummm...Elaine....if we follow all your suggestions, we'll wonder why we are bothering with Christmas at all. Skin it back to Dickensian proportions and let's all feel lucky we have a lump of coal for the fire and a skinny little goose for the family dinner.Lighten up, Elaine. I do like the suggestion of gifts that get used up rather than sit around forever, but otherwise, let all of us drive our wonderful consumerist economy with our endless spending on tacky Christmas stuff and overdone gifts. That way the people who produce the tacky Christmas stuff can live to see next Christmas.
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Summary: Elaine, why do you still do Christmas at all?
Review: Bah Humbug. Ummm...Elaine....if we follow all your suggestions, we'll wonder why we are bothering with Christmas at all. Skin it back to Dickensian proportions and let's all feel lucky we have a lump of coal for the fire and a skinny little goose for the family dinner. Lighten up, Elaine. I do like the suggestion of gifts that get used up rather than sit around forever, but otherwise, let all of us drive our wonderful consumerist economy with our endless spending on tacky Christmas stuff and overdone gifts. That way the people who produce the tacky Christmas stuff can live to see next Christmas.
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Summary: To the reviewer who thinks Christmas is a Christian holiday
Review: For the reviewer who thinks Christmas is a Christian holiday--think again. Everything about the season of christmas is Pagan. The tree, caroling, wreaths, gift giving. Only Christians have mistakenly associated it with Christ's birth which was not in December but actually somewhere between April and June. And another Pagan holiday that Christians have "stolen" is easter or as we Pagans call it, Ostara, named after the Goddess Ostara, the Goddess of renewal and rebirth. All the bunnies, chicks, and soft spring colors--yep, you guessed it--all Pagan. Oh, and that fish Christians put on the backs of their cars, also Pagan. And when you say "Amen" after prayers, you are sending that prayer up to a Pagan God. I have no objection to anyone's choice of religion, or the way they practice it; but you should do a little research next time into what is and is not Christianity. And please remember that the King James Version of the Bible is just that...King James I of England's version. He had it re-written from the Latin texts and had several parts changed and even excluded to suit himself. Pick up a Catholic Bible sometime if you don't believe me. You will find there are several more books than what is in a KJV. Also, from the original Hebrew scrolls to Latin to English, there has been a wealth of meaning lost in the translations. Especially since some words cannot be accurately translated in the first place.
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Summary: Plans to implement suggestions in this book.
Review: I am reading all of Elaine St. James' books. This is the first I have completed. Will now send it to each of my daughters, asking them to notate which ideas interest them. Then we might even have the "guys" scan it for their suggestions. Determined to have a more peaceful Christmas next year.
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Summary: easier holiday
Review: I enjoyed the book, it was very helpful to me. I have read 2 other of the authors books, and I agree with the other reviews that some of the book was recycled. But a lot of it was researched about how the holiday began, and alternatives to some of the traditions we have and why we have them. I agree that sending Christmas cards is bad for the eviroment and we could save a lot of trees, and money in stamps. Also why are we not using recycled wrapping paper, and why are we bothering to wrap gifts at all? Why not use news paper for kids if you have to wrap gifts? she has an entire section on Christmas for kids. I think this is a good book, and worth reading if you want to simplify your holiday. I love the portion on non traditonal Christmas and celebrating as other cultures do. Less focus on gifts and more focus on what we truly care about.
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Summary: AWESOME! Great ideas to recapture true spirit of Christmas
Review: I love this book. It is filled with wonderful ideas for recapturing the true spirit of Christmas, rather than running into debt to keep up with the Joneses. In essence, it stresses the importance of deciding what is important to *you*, and how to modify unrealistic goals to keep from running ragged, incurring insurmountable debt, etc. For example, it recommends not being intimidated by what others tip at holidays, and to instead tip what *you* can afford to the people *you* feel genuinely deserve it ... to serve delicious meals, rather than food extravaganzas containing numerous dishes nobody even likes ... excellent tips for getting along with disagreeable and/or eccentric relatives ... ways to help (often anonymously) those who really need it ... etc., etc., etc. The ideas are practical, useful, and excellent -- and are all offered as suggestions, rather than the "right" way. Reading the book, you can either proceed from cover to cover or choose the chapter headings that apply to you -- just as you can decide which suggestions would be viable for you. Each of us has different memories, favorites, etc. -- and this book will help each person decide how best to use it to simplify his or her Christmas. In short, I love this book, and am delighted that I bought it.
Rating:
Summary: AWESOME! Great ideas to recapture true spirit of Christmas
Review: I love this book. It is filled with wonderful ideas for recapturing the true spirit of Christmas, rather than running into debt to keep up with the Joneses. In essence, it stresses the importance of deciding what is important to *you*, and how to modify unrealistic goals to keep from running ragged, incurring insurmountable debt, etc. For example, it recommends not being intimidated by what others tip at holidays, and to instead tip what *you* can afford to the people *you* feel genuinely deserve it ... to serve delicious meals, rather than food extravaganzas containing numerous dishes nobody even likes ... excellent tips for getting along with disagreeable and/or eccentric relatives ... ways to help (often anonymously) those who really need it ... etc., etc., etc. The ideas are practical, useful, and excellent -- and are all offered as suggestions, rather than the "right" way. Reading the book, you can either proceed from cover to cover or choose the chapter headings that apply to you -- just as you can decide which suggestions would be viable for you. Each of us has different memories, favorites, etc. -- and this book will help each person decide how best to use it to simplify his or her Christmas. In short, I love this book, and am delighted that I bought it.
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Summary: Some Good Ideas But Very Anti-Christmas
Review: I really enjoyed this author's other book _Living The Simple Life_ and was really excited about this one. Ideas to simplify Christmas are *exactly* what I needed! And I did get a few good ideas from this book - maybe a handful. I agree with a previous reviewer who said the book has a lot of "Filler". It does. But I almost felt depressed reading this book - obviously Ms. St. James really dislikes Christmas. The book was extremely negative about every aspect of Christmas, with the exception of encouraging outreach and giving to those less fortunate [something I actively support as well]. But she hates Christmas trees, Christmas cards, Christmas dinner, giving or receiving Christmas gifts [even suggesting that we are "burdening" our loved ones by giving them gifts]. She hates pretty much everything about Christmas and apparently doesn't celebrate it. There is also a strong Pagan/Earth Religion undertone to the book. Christmas is a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Christ [or at least it WAS until it was hijacked by marketing executives...]. The author never once mentions the ostensible purpose of Christmas - Christ's birth. She does however have a chapter on celebrating Christmas for "Mother Earth", repeated mention of Christmas as "Winter Solstice" [a Wiccan/Earth Religion Holy Day], as well as another section on how to bury arrows representing prayers to the "Great Spirit". [I'm pro-environment myself, so I'm not discouraging the "be nice to mother earth" idea, but it was very awkwardly done in a book on this topic]. She is very "new agey" and apparently very non-Christian. While I have no problem with her personal religious choices, its kind of weird reading a book on celebrating Christmas by a non-Christian. Kind of like reading a book on Celebrating Hannukah written by an Atheist or something. I think some of the suggestions she makes might actually be offensive to more fundamentalist Christian readers as well. Overall, I don't think this book was worth the money. I wish I'd taken in out at the library. It was still worth reading for the handful of good ideas I came accross, but overall it was pretty lame, slightly depressing, and gave me a weird vibe. I think _Shelter For The Spirit_ by Victoria Moran has MUCH better chapters on celebrating holidays, and she is very respectful of all kinds of different religious beliefs [including Christian]. I highly recommend her book.
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Summary: A few useful tips buried in a lot of filler
Review: I think the main problem with this book is that Elaine St. James set herself an arbitrary goal of finding "100 ways" to simplify the holidays. This was a bit optimistic. Instead, we get a few dozen fairly obvious ideas rehashed 100 different ways. For instance, she devotes no fewer than seven of her 100 tips to the general subject of avoiding or ignoring commercialism and advertising hype. Why not say it once and be done with it? Another problem is that many of her tips are not actually about simplifying. Putting them into practice would be MORE complicated than not. For example: Do anonymous good deeds for someone several times a week for a month (#25); Come up with a new way of celebrating Christmas every year (#32); Send hand-written personal notes instead of cards (#36, 54, 55); Start a nonprofit neighborhood organization (#49); Have twelve days of "meaningful" gifts (#71); etc. While I'm sure these ideas will give many readers the warm-fuzzies, they really have no place in a book about simplifying. Finally, there are a few "tips" that are really anecdotes, some of which involve circumstances so specific to the people involved that I can't imagine how they would be useful to anyone else. Taking out the redundancies, the anti-simplifications, and the overly specific anecdotes cuts the number of useful ideas roughly in half. That said, there are a number of genuinely good, original ideas that probably never would have occurred to me if I hadn't picked up the book. So I can't pan it entirely.
Rating:
Summary: A few useful tips buried in a lot of filler
Review: This book is a great compendium of ideas for taking the hectic out of the holidays. St. James challenges our pre-conceived notions that we must do all the things we've always done, and even that all our friends and relatives will really care if we stop! I'd like to mention for the true fans of St. James and her Simplicity movement that there will be a chat with this author on the womenconnect website on Fri., Dec. 11 at 2 p.m. ET. Enjoy!
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