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

The average rating for There Really Is a Santa Claus: The History of Saint Nicholas and Christmas Holiday Traditions based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-11-13 00:00:00 George Albright Less and a quarter of this book is about Santa Claus and Christmas traditions most of it is speeches given by American presidents at the lighting of the National Christmas Tree, ten pages are for speeches at the lighting of National Menorah Hannukkah also by American presidents. Learned about this book from a video at Prager University.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-01-01 00:00:00 Andre Beier 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.