There Really Is a Santa Claus: The History of Saint Nicholas and Christmas Holiday Traditions Book

I'm afraid I was rather disappointed in this book. It should probably have been titled "A Collection of Miscellaneous Facts About the History of Santa Claus and Christmas." There was a lot of information, some of it quite interesting, but it was very poorly organized, especially in the second half, with a great deal of material that was irrelevant or redundant. In addition, the editing was about the poorest I have seen in a book by such a well-known author. As an example of both these problems, the entire text of the Christmas carol Good Christian Men, Rejoice was included in its entirety - twice in a row!

Other Christmas carols were also included in full, often with the chorus reprinted after each verse. Also included were long, rambling stories by Washington Irving about the Dutch settlement at New Amsterdam, and its eccentric governor, Peter Stuyvesant, which were only tangentially relevant at best. In the second half, particularly, it felt as though the author's entire research notebook was simply reprinted, sans editing, to make the book longer. I really would have preferred a much shorter book with some organization and decent editing. I am interested enough in history that I bothered to finish the book, but I'm really hoping the others I've bought by this author prove to be of better quality than this one.