Featured Ebooks
Winter Stories Header
After the Fall semester, we often speak about going "Home for the Holidays," and that's because during the months of November, December, and January there are a lot of holidays celebrated around the world.
These Featured Ebooks include books about secular world celebrations like American Thanksgiving, German Christmas, and Chinese New Year. But also, we included books that cover several world religions, such as Hannukah, the Feast of Fools, the Winter Solstice, Diwali, and more.
So whether you're looking to learn more about the holidays you celebrate or to experience holidays from other cultures or religions, we've got an ebook here for you.
Winter Ebooks Gallery
Thanksgiving
In this, the first in-depth study of the most American of holidays, James Baker sweeps away lingering myths and misconceptions to show how this celebration day was born and grew to be an essential part of our national spirit.
Seven Spools of Thread
In an African village live seven brothers who make family life miserable with their constant fighting. When their father dies, he leaves an unusual will: by sundown, the brothers must make gold out of seven spools of thread. If they fail, they will be turned out as beggars. Using the Nguzo Saba, or "seven principles" of Kwanzaa, the author has created an unforgettable story that shows how family members can pull together, for their own good and the good of the entire community. Magnificent and inspiring linoleum block prints by Daniel Minter bring joy to this Kwanzaa celebration.
Chinese New Year
Chinese New Year begins each January or February on the first day of the new year in China's traditional calendar. This 15-day celebration is the most important holiday in Chinese communities all over the world.
Diwali
During Diwali, Hindus, Sikhs and Jains celebrate the legends and stories that describe the triumph of good over evil and justice over oppression. Critically acclaimed author Rina Singh explores her Indian roots as she tells the Diwali stories, which remind us that eventually light will prevail over darkness.
Christmas
Written for everyone who loves and is simultaneously driven crazy by the holiday season, Christmas: A Candid History provides an enlightening, entertaining perspective on how the annual Yuletide celebration got to be what it is today. In a fascinating, concise tour through history, the book tells the story of Christmas, from its pre-Christian roots, through the birth of Jesus, to the holiday's spread across Europe into the Americas and beyond, and to its mind-boggling transformation through modern consumerism.
Wiccan Feasts, Celebrations, and Rituals
The Wiccan calendar is marked by significant festivals, called sabbats. In this book, Silja reveals how you can bring some of that magic into your life, even if working as a solitary witch. Discover, too, how Wiccans celebrate personal rites of passage, such as the naming of a baby and a couple committing to each other in a Wiccan wedding, known as a handfasting. Finally, Silja explains how to write your own daily, weekly, or monthly rituals to bring you peace and happiness. Lavishly illustrated throughout, this is your essential guide to all Wiccan celebrations.
Scroogenomics
Christmas is a time of seasonal cheer, family get-togethers, holiday parties, and . . . gift giving. Lots and lots--and lots--of gift giving. It's hard to imagine any Christmas without this time-honored custom. But let's stop to consider the gifts we receive--the rooster sweater from Grandma or the singing fish from Uncle Mike. How many of us get gifts we like? How many of us give gifts not knowing what recipients want? Did your cousin really look excited about that jumping alarm clock?
The Hanukkah Anthology
The Hanukkah Anthology delves into the stories and messages of Hanukkah as they have unfolded in Jewish literature over the past two thousand years: biblical intimations of the festival, postbiblical writings, selections from the Talmud and midrashim, excerpts from medieval books, home liturgies, laws and customs, observances in different nations, stories and poems, art, and recipes. This timeless volume features many works by prominent authors, including Herman Wouk, Judah L. Magnes, Chaim Potok, Heinrich Heine, Emma Lazarus, Howard Fast, Sholom Aleichem, Curt Leviant, I. L. Peretz, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Sacred Folly
For centuries, the Feast of Fools has been condemned and occasionally celebrated as a disorderly, even transgressive Christian festival, in which reveling clergy elected a burlesque Lord of Misrule, presided over the divine office wearing animal masks or women's clothes, sang obscene songs, swung censers that gave off foul-smelling smoke, played dice at the altar, and otherwise parodied the liturgy of the church. Afterward, they would take to the streets, howling, issuing mock indulgences, hurling manure at bystanders, and staging scurrilous plays. The problem with this popular account, intriguing as it may be, is that it is wrong.
The Magic of Winter Solstice
In this, the third in a series of e-books on the solstices and equinoxes within this sacred cycle, Danu Forest reveals the secrets of the Winter Solstice, when the sun appears to stand still and the days are at their shortest. This is a festival of renewal and rebirth; a time for rest, reflecting on the past year and preparing for the new one. Throughout the text, Danu skilfully revives ancient traditions and encourages us to reconnect with nature, and ourselves, with a host of practical rituals.
Flickipedia
Looking for a perfect movie for Thanksgiving Day after dinner? Or how about a film about Christmas you've never tried that's perfect for the kids? No matter what the occasion, Flickipedia will steer you to over 1,300 films that will fit your movie-viewing appetite perfectly.
Yuletide in Dixie
How did enslaved African Americans in the Old South really experience Christmas? Did Christmastime provide slaves with a lengthy and jubilant respite from labor and the whip, as is generally assumed, or is the story far more complex and troubling?
A Holly Jolly Diwali
Arriving in India to celebrate Diwali, Niki is immediately drawn to London musician Sameer. At the wedding, the champagne flows and their flirtatious banter shows the attraction is mutual. When she gets a job offer back home, Niki must decide what she wants out of the next chapter of life.
Inventing the Christmas Tree
A colorfully decorated Christmas tree, lit with twinkling lights, provokes awe and delight. We understand the lighted tree as a central symbol of the Christmas season, but what are the roots of the tradition? Who first thought to bedeck a tree, to bring it inside? How and where did the local activity grow into a widespread tradition, and how has the Christmas tree traveled across time and continents?
Pumpkin
In this fascinating cultural and natural history, Cindy Ott tells the story of the pumpkin. Beginning with the myth of the first Thanksgiving, she shows how Americans have used the pumpkin to fulfull their desire to maintain connections to nature and to the family farm of lore, and, ironically, how small farms and rural communities have been revitalized in the process. And while the pumpkin has inspired American myths and traditions, the pumpkin itself has changed because of the ways people have perceived, valued, and used it.
America's Favorite Holidays
America's Favorite Holidays explores how five of America's culturally important holidays--Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, and Thanksgiving--came to be what they are today, seasonal and religious celebrations heavily influenced by modern popular culture.
Kwanzaa
Since 1966, Kwanzaa has been celebrated as a black holiday tradition, an annual recognition of cultural pride in the African American community. But how did this holiday originate, and what is its broader cultural significance? Kwanzaa: Black Power and the Making of the African-American Holiday Tradition explores the political beginning and later expansion of Kwanzaa, from its start as a Black Power holiday, to its current place as one of the most mainstream of the black holiday traditions.
Christmas, Ideology and Popular Culture
How do we understand Christmas? What does it mean? This book is a lively introduction to the study of popular culture through one central case study. It explores the cultural, social and historical contexts of Christmas in the UK, USA and Australia, covering such topics as fiction, film, television, art, newspapers and magazines, war, popular music and carols.
Quotations for All Occasions
It's hard to know what to say for every occasion, and even harder to say something new. Wow your family and friends this holiday season with a unique quote selected for the day by Quotations for All Occasions. This book provides memorable comments for any event, allowing you to find the perfect bon mot for all of life's characteristic passages.
Christmas in Germany
For poets, priests, and politicians--and especially ordinary Germans--in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the image of the loving nuclear family gathered around the Christmas tree symbolized the unity of the nation at large. German Christmas was supposedly organic, a product of the winter solstice rituals of pagan "Teutonic" tribes, the celebration of the birth of Jesus, and the age-old customs that defined German character. Yet, as Joe Perry argues, Germans also used these annual celebrations to contest the deepest values that held the German community together: faith, family, and love, certainly, but also civic responsibility, material prosperity, and national belonging.