The book is in two parts. The first is to record your personal memories of Christmas holidays past. The second, is a five-year journal for you to write in during each Christmas season.
Ashley Moore's life forever changed the day her mother died, and she was sent to live with relatives. Now, ten years later, Ashley returns home, hoping to connect with her estranged father. When she learns he's decided to reopen the family's Christmas lodge for the upcoming holiday season, Ashley volunteers to help. While cleaning, she discovers her mother's journal detailing the last month of her life. Will the book hold the answer as to why her dad sent her away? Who is the mysterious Adam her mother keeps mentioning in the diary? Can the words of her mother reconcile father and daughter in time for Christmas?
Whether you're silly or serious, this delightfully illustrated holiday journal is for you! Chock full of more than 90 drawing and writing activities, this book is the perfect place to record your Christmas likes, dislikes, hopes, and dreams. Fun fill-in-the-blanks and activities include designing a candy cane and ornament, making a list of your favorite holiday songs, telling how you feel when you wake up on Christmas morning, and more! All you need is a pencil to get started on making your memories last.
“Christmas movies are revealing windows into religion, consumerism, family, and American pop culture, and Zukowski offers a compelling, highly readable guide to this long-flourishing genre. Exploring classics as well as flops, he illuminates both the resilience and the limitations of the holiday’s celebration on screen.” —Leigh E. Schmidt, Washington University in St. Louis, author of Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays How the Grinch Stole Christmas weighs materialism against community. The Polar Express tests the wonder of miracles in an age of cynicism. And Die Hard (yes, Die Hard) wrestles with the impact of broken relationships on holiday joy. With Christmas on the Screen, journalist John A. Zukowski takes readers on an historic tour of Christmas films and changing American values to ask the question, “What does Christmas mean to us?”
Have a More Meaningful Christmas Season In Hurry Less, Worry Less at Christmas, Judy Christie meets us where we are--in a frenzied, out-of-control frame of mind--and helps us begin to have a deeper understanding of the joy of the Christmas season and how that can be a starting point for a more abundant life in the new year. Topics include: Getting Christmas clutter and activities under control Developing a thankful heart Beginning new traditions Savoring the spiritual focus of Christmas This updated edition contains new content to help make the Christmas season even more joyful, peaceful, and meaningful. "In her delightful, contemporary, and practical book, Judy Christie takes the 'Grinch' out of holiday preparations. She enabled me to see Christmas as a sacred, joyful journey rather than a difficult, demanding marathon." --Nell W. Mohney, Author of Slay Your Giants "Judy Christie must have been reading my mind! I've already started planning a simpler, calmer holiday season this year." --Cynthia Bond Hopson, Author of Bad Hair Days, Rainy Days, and Mondays "Judy Christie provides a welcome reminder to wait upon the Lord, and some practical, real-life steps toward comfort, joy, and simplicity." --Rob Weber, Co-author of Beginnings: The Spiritual Life
Stories to inspire, crafts to decorate the home, gingerbread houses of all sorts to bake, and drinks to bring cheer to all who come by: these are just some of the ways to make Christmas very, very merry, and more than 500 of them are beautifully collected right here. How will you celebrate? Perhaps the traditional American style seems most appealing: then make a Tole Painted Nativity, whip up some delicious Hot Buttered Rum, and read “The Night Before Christmas” aloud. For a classic Victorian holiday, sing “Deck the Halls,” place a charming Violin and Cherub wreath on the door, and sip some mulled wine. Or choose the Country, Southwestern (a little salsa verde, anyone?), International, or fun-filled Not-Quite-Grown-Up style.
Cutting edge and relevant to the local context, this first Australia and New Zealand edition of Hoyer, Consumer Behaviour, covers the latest research from the academic field of consumer behaviour. The text explores new examples of consumer behaviour using case studies, advertisements and brands from Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. The authors recognise the critical links to areas such as marketing, public policy and ethics, as well as covering the importance of online consumer behaviour with significant content on how social media and smartphones are changing the way marketers understand consumers. * Students grasp the big picture and see how the chapters and topics relate to each other by reviewing detailed concept maps * Marketing Implications boxes examine how theoretical concepts have been used in practice, and challenge students to think about how marketing decisions impact consumers * Considerations boxes require students to think deeply about technological, research, cultural and international factors to consider in relation to the contemporary consumer * Opening vignettes and end-of-chapter cases give students real-world insights into, and opportunities to analyse consumer behaviour, with extensive Australian and international examples providing issues in context
In Christmas as Religion, Christopher Deacy explores the premise that religion plays an elementary role in our understanding of the Christmas festival, but takes issue with much of the existing literature which is inclined to limit the contours and parameters of 'religion' to particular representations and manifestations of institutional forms of Christianity. 'Religion' is often tacitly identified as having an ecclesiastical frame of reference, so that if the Church is not deemed to play a central role in the practice of Christmas for many people today then it can legitimately be side-lined and relegated to the periphery of any discussion relating to what Christmas 'means'. Deacy argues that such approaches fail to take adequate stock of the manifold ways in which people's beliefs and values take shape in modern society. For example, Christmas films or radio programmes may comprise a non-specifically Christian, but nonetheless religiously rich, repository of beliefs, values, sentiments and aspirations. Therefore, this book makes the case for laying to rest the secularization thesis, with its simplistic assumption that religion in Western society is undergoing a period of escalating and irrevocable erosion, and to see instead that the secular may itself be a repository of the religious. Rather than see Christmas as comprising alternative or analogous forms of religious expression, or dependent on any causal relationship to the Christian tradition, Deacy maintains that it is religious per se, and, moreover, it is its very secularity that makes Christmas such a compelling, and even transcendent, religious holiday.