Christmas in America

by David Elliot Cohen (Editor)

A panoramic photographic tour of America during the holiday season from Thanksgiving to Epiphany features the work of one hundred top photographers as they document the Christmas preparation, celebration, and aftermath across the country

Genres: Christmas, Photography, Art, Nonfiction

208 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1988

Reviews

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

My sister and I read this book every Christmas. It was always on my grandma‘s coffee table when I was growing up and we have a tradition of looking through it together every holiday season. 🎄❤️✨

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 star is a biased review seeing as I will always cherish this book & the memories of making it. My family is featured for a few pages, and I remember the day before Christmas Eve when Nick Kelsh, the photographer, came over to install the camera on the ceiling so he could capture before & after Christmas gifts pictures on Christmas morning. I just reread and looked at the book cover to cover & it is certainly a bit of a time capsule from the late 80s. Toys-R-Us, Kodak, & Kmart are thriving corporations, acid wash jeans are abundant, & Jerry Falwell is present as well as documentation of the rise of televangelism. It, showing its time again, lacks true diversity of representation of the whole country, but there are glimpses into a lot of America's terrain & people.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

i came across this in a thrift store and fell in love with it immidiately. Page after page of full-color full-page and smaller photos (that capture subjects with awesome 80s hair and acid washed jackets) of quirky to reverent treatment of every possible way to celebrate--from a freshman tuba player in a parade to santas getting their beards styled with a curling iron to churchgoers to a firefighter restoring a donated tricycle to ballerinas waiting in the wings for their part in the nutcracker, it is engrossing, with little short captions to help set the scene. i can't say enough how much we enjoy pulling this out at Christmas.

[Jennifer Ware · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful.

[Steph · Rating 5 out of 5]

as i was always hungry for christmas, my childhood decembers involved many hours spent flipping through this coffee table book of photographs. it's very 1988 and has a time capsule feel, yet many of the photos are timeless. this year i read it cover to cover for the first time, and it was a rather intense experience.

when i was younger i didn't realize how heavily religious so many of the photos are, though of course that comes with the territory. my favorites are the pictures of kids and families experiencing joy, wonder, and other intense emotions. some of these photos capture humanity remarkably well. definitely a pleasure to flip through!!

[Rosa Cline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully put together book of photographes taken around the United States from before Christmas, during Christmas and after. Most of the photos have a small paragraph explaining a little about the photo. Some are just decorations or nature, others are photos of people doing charity work, others are of homeless or 'down on luck' people getting a nice dinner or gift. There are even some photos taken by children that won a photo contest. Very nice to look through on this Christmas Eve morning.

[Marti · Rating 3 out of 5]

I annually pull this book out for the coffee table during the Advent & Christmas seasons and, by randomly flipping through it's pages over the years, I suppose I really have read "Christmas in America" in its entirety. It's a glimpse at how Americans circa 1987 celebrated this holiday season -- from Thanksgiving to Christmas clean-up. Many of the 100 photographers who created this album were also photographers for the "Day in the Life of America" project.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and charming. Just warms the heart.