[8.0/10] Very engaging, albeit understandably compressed history of the holiday! If you’ve watched History Channel documentaries from this area, you’ll know what to expect. There’s a lot of narration and talking heads played over historical images and modern day B-roll footage. But it’s a format that works, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The actual substance is quick, but compelling, in the way that will make you go “Ooooh!” multiple times as the narrator reveals the origins of various holiday traditions. The documentary traces the origins of the holiday in Norse and Pagan traditions, to the Catholic church adopting the winter celebrations and pegging them to Jesus’ birth, to the Puritans waging an actual war on Xmas, to the acceptance of the holiday in the United States as a throwback to “old world” English and German practices, to modern celebration. The brief histories of the tree, Santa, Rudolph, and mistletoe are all fascinating.
The documentary loses some steam as it gets closer to the present. Bringing in Jean Shepherd of A Christmas Story fame to talk about his childhood experiences of the holiday feels like fluff in an otherwise substance-filled special. That said, the documentary would likely feel incomplete if it didn’t at least touch on modern practice of the holiday, so it’s nice to get a little of it, if only in a very anodyne sort of way.
Overall though, this special does a superb job of putting the holiday traditions into a broader historical context, explaining how the modern version of Christmas came to be, and the up-and-down, ever evolving path the holiday took to become such a monumental fixture of the American culture and calendar.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2023-11-28T02:24:29Z
[8.0/10] Very engaging, albeit understandably compressed history of the holiday! If you’ve watched History Channel documentaries from this area, you’ll know what to expect. There’s a lot of narration and talking heads played over historical images and modern day B-roll footage. But it’s a format that works, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The actual substance is quick, but compelling, in the way that will make you go “Ooooh!” multiple times as the narrator reveals the origins of various holiday traditions. The documentary traces the origins of the holiday in Norse and Pagan traditions, to the Catholic church adopting the winter celebrations and pegging them to Jesus’ birth, to the Puritans waging an actual war on Xmas, to the acceptance of the holiday in the United States as a throwback to “old world” English and German practices, to modern celebration. The brief histories of the tree, Santa, Rudolph, and mistletoe are all fascinating.
The documentary loses some steam as it gets closer to the present. Bringing in Jean Shepherd of A Christmas Story fame to talk about his childhood experiences of the holiday feels like fluff in an otherwise substance-filled special. That said, the documentary would likely feel incomplete if it didn’t at least touch on modern practice of the holiday, so it’s nice to get a little of it, if only in a very anodyne sort of way.
Overall though, this special does a superb job of putting the holiday traditions into a broader historical context, explaining how the modern version of Christmas came to be, and the up-and-down, ever evolving path the holiday took to become such a monumental fixture of the American culture and calendar.