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The article announces the call for papers for the special issue of the journal about the culture of the American Christmas.

In the article, the author offers information on the articles/papers for the theme issue about American Christmas like religious rituals of the American Christmas, Christmas costumes, and the holiday season.

The present paper, rooted in the field of cathedral studies, proposes a framework that analyses the qualitative results from a survey administered in Liverpool Cathedral at two Christmas Eve carol services on the afternoon of 24 December in 2019. The argument is introduced by a review of both quantitative and qualitative literature in the field of cathedral studies, as well the former and current mission priorities of Liverpool Cathedral. Attention is also paid to the liturgical celebration in which survey participants took part. The qualitative results from the Christmas Eve questionnaire are organised into six main themes: cathedral as place, cathedral liturgy, choir and music, general positive affirmation, cathedral local engagement, and cathedral welcome. Conclusions are drawn concerning the significance of the data to the field of cathedral studies, as well as praxis, and trajectories for further research are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the economic and cultural significance of Christmas in many nations, there has been relatively little geographical research on how it shapes people's socialities, spatialities, and subjectivities. In this paper, practice theory was used to reflect on the materials, meanings, and competencies associated with older people who host the celebration at home, and thematic analysis of qualitative interviews with 20 individuals aged 65+ explored participants' experiences of doing so. Findings reveal that homes' material forms affect older people's ability to host, while the 'stuff' of Christmas such as decorations, special foods, or gifts shape those homes as festive and welcoming places. Food sourcing and preparation were critical competencies for female participants, and shifting capacities to be a host influenced participants' sense of autonomy and identity. Regardless of the extent to which participants celebrated Christmas, the meanings of hosting centred on social connection, contribution, and shoring up family. Choosing not to host or being unable to contribute in expected ways at Christmas could signify failure, exclusion, or incapability as an older person, parent, or citizen. Examining these issues in the case study, based in Aotearoa/New Zealand, reveals the existence and effects of the social expectations, norms, and obligations that typify Christmas. More broadly, the study highlights the need for geographers to attend to the ways in which celebrations shape and are shaped by diverse practices, places, and peoples and are assembled, reproduced, and resisted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lighting up darkness is a material practice shared across many cultures. Lighting up winter darkness is a particular concern in urban areas in order to make urban spaces feel safer and more welcoming. Temporary lights, often characterised as 'Christmas' or 'Winter' lights, are installed over the darkest period of the year (December in the northern hemisphere) in town and city centres to attract shoppers and tourists. This paper examines the lights displays installed over the Christmas/ New Year period in two British towns. In each case the lights are installed by volunteers, who also arrange a 'switch on' community celebration. The research argues that the architecture of the lights signifies and reinforces the identities of the communities involved. In particular, the paper examines: the importance of infrastructure for the ongoing creation of community; the creative potential of these temporary structures for community identity; and the essential materiality of community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rich array of original Christmas folklore, mythology, and stories exists in Yiddish. In this paper, I present a framework for understanding the Yiddish literary response to Christmas in the context of a dark midwinter folklore that has evolved across cultures since antiquity. Among Christians, this midwinter folklore gave rise to the fundamental Christmas literary motif of the balance of cold and darkness with warmth and light, with the latter two often signifying comfort and goodwill. I argue that the fundamental Christmas literary motif employed in Yiddish is consistent with that of Christians, but key elements are distorted to reflect a distinctly Jewish perspective: Yiddish folklore inverts the figure of Jesus from being the Christian emblem of light into an emblem of midwinter darkness, and modern Yiddish literature adapts the motif of balancing darkness with light as a metaphor for balancing Old World and New World values. Whereas light characteristically prevails in the traditional Christmas story, the Yiddish Christmas story corrupts this optimism to express Jewish sentiments about Christianity and the non-Jewish world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Swedish preschool education is, by law, non-confessional. Yet, it is also an educational context within which most children aged 1–5 encounter traditions that carry Christian connotations. This paper explores how two Swedish preschools maintain a balance between keeping education non-confessional and paying attention to the traditions that are associated with the preparation for and celebration of Christmas – Advent. The data consist of ten videotaped observations from two preschools. The data was thematised with the help of Ninian Smart's dimensions of religious and secular worldviews. This way, we could show that the different traditions the two preschools were engaged in during the four weeks before Christmas contributed to a banal reproduction of a holiday season with roots in Lutheran Christianity. At the same time, the preschools contributed to a (re)production of traditions that evoke a national imaginery. Our results show that Advent in Swedish preschools is characterised as a non-confessional task for the institution. Thus, the principle of non-confessionality lives side by side with a banal national religion. Thereby, the Swedish preschool plays an integral part in the banal reproduction of a Swedishness that includes Lutheran Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper models a new approach to theorizing topics via music informatics. Our case study for topic is winter as it appears in video game music. Like opera or oratorio, video game music leaves little ambiguity as to what the music ought to signify. Video games commonly have an icy or snowy area, complete with cold-weather creatures and landscapes as well as new game mechanics and music for the player to encounter. Our dataset has over 160 examples of such music, representing games on all mainstream platforms (Nintendo, PlayStation, computer, etc.) and spanning the years 1987-2020. Each example is tagged with its musical features. We define five core characteristics of the winter topic: heavy reverb, arpeggiated textures, metallic percussion instruments, plucked string instruments, and omission of membranophones. We also situate winter as a topic related to Christmas, '80s music, and the waltz. Finally, we explore Nintendo's idiosyncratic approach to winter music. Our study finds that instrumentation--particularly percussion--and audio technology are key considerations in establishing the winter topic in video game music. More broadly, we demonstrate the potential of computational musicology to augment and complement traditional approaches to topic theory, whether in relation to video game music or any other repertoire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we focus on the eruption of Mount Etna on Christmas 2018, which emitted great amounts of S O 2 from 24th to 30th December into the free troposphere. Simulations based on two different estimations of S O 2 emission fluxes are conducted with the chemistry-transport model MOCAGE in order to study the impact of these estimations on the volcanic plume modeling. The two flux emissions used are retrieved (1) from the ground-based network FLAME, located on the flank of the volcano, and (2) from the spaceborne instrument SEVIRI onboard the geostationary satellite MSG. Multiple spaceborne observations, in the infrared and ultraviolet bands, are used to evaluate the model results. Overall, the model results match well with the plume location over the period of the eruption showing the good transport of the volcanic plume by the model, which is linked to the use of a realistic estimation of the altitude of injection of the emissions. However, there are some discrepancies in the plume concentrations of S O 2 between the two simulations, which are due to the differences between the two emission flux estimations used that are large on some of the days. These differences are linked to uncertainties in the retrieval methods and observations used to derive S O 2 volcanic fluxes. We find that the uncertainties in the satellite-retrieved column of S O 2 used for the evaluation of the simulations, linked to the instrument sensitivity and/or the retrieval algorithm, are sometimes nearly as large as the differences between the two simulations. This shows a limitation of the use of satellite retrievals of S O 2 concentrations to quantitatively validate modeled volcanic plumes. In the paper, we also discuss approaches to improve the simulation of S O 2 concentrations in volcanic plumes through model improvements and also via more advanced methods to more effectively use satellite-derived products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the use of /r/-sandhi in the speech of Queen Elizabeth II. Potential contexts of /r/-sandhi were identified and analysed for the presence or absence of rhoticity and glottalisation in a corpus of Christmas speeches over a period of seven decades. The results show that the Queen avoids intrusive /r/ altogether but that she uses linking /r/ in most potential cases, that glottalisation is common when /r/-sandhi is not used, and that linking /r/ and glottalisation can also co-occur. A comparison with a longitudinal corpus of speakers also shows that the Queen resembles group-level trends in the case of linking /r/ but differs in the case of intrusive /r/. The results also indicate that a number of phonetic and usage-based variables influence linking /r/ usage, including previously unreported factors such as vowel quality collocation frequency. The findings are discussed in the context of usage-based theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present paper, set within the developing science of cathedral studies, was to analyse the qualitative comments added by 113 of the 567 participants who submitted responses to a quantitative survey while attending the Holly Bough Service in Liverpool Cathedral on the afternoon of the Fourth Sunday of Advent 2019. These qualitative comments added depth and texture to the quantitative responses to illuminate five core aspects of the participants' experience: the aesthetic and spiritual qualities of the Cathedral; the aesthetic and spiritual qualities of the Holly Bough Service; the aesthetic and spiritual qualities of the Cathedral's musical tradition; the wider sense of connection with the Cathedral; and the impact of the ministry of the Cathedral clergy. The qualitative comments also drew attention to matters for further reflection by the Cathedral. Conclusions are drawn regarding the general effectiveness of Cathedrals within an increasingly secular environment, and the specific effectiveness of Liverpool Cathedral's mission strategy of 'Encounter'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interdisciplinary nature of food studies lends itself to the study of food through many avenues, most notably in this research, through folklore and the oral history transcripts of the Schools' Collection made by the Irish Folklore Commission in 1937–1938. Folklore can give us an insight into sometimes overlooked features of society and how people's lives can be studied and highlighted through their relationship with food. The Christmas period was an extremely important time in Irish tradition, and food was a main aspect of that celebration. This paper, therefore, at first delves into the literature surrounding Christmas, folklore, and food; diet and social class; gender, and food in rural Ireland, before comparing it with the oral history transcripts of the National Folklore Collection's online archive, to unearth a better understanding of the relationship and the role of food in the Christmas festival in Ireland's recent past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the food traditions of Imbolg or St. Brigid's Day (1st February), one of the quarter days of the Irish calendar year, which heralds the awakening of spring. Imbolg is comparable to Christmas eve, in that celebratory potato dishes such as colcannon or 'poundies' and boxty are consumed. Throughout the Schools' Collection (6,000 copybooks filled with folklore collected by over 50,000 children), a rich food history where customs, superstitions, divinations and a mixing of the pagan and Christian traditions is evident. Four main themes: 'Dishes', 'Brigid's Crosses', 'Biddy Boys and Brídeogs' and 'Brigid, miracles and religion' were identified, which share an affinity with the extant folklore literature. However, certain nuances are also highlighted in the Schools' Folklore Collection (SFC) revealing a rich and oftentimes neglected food culture. This paper aims to address the current lacuna within the Folklore literature concerning foodways, whilst also highlighting opportunities for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a Marxist feminist textual analysis of Hallmark's "Countdown to Christmas" made-for-television film series of 2018. While Hallmark films are widely and rightly criticized for their lack of racial, sexual and socioeconomic diversity, I examine how representations of women at work provide both critical and contradictory narratives of late capitalism, owing in part to class politics of the Christmas film genre and the (post)feminist rhetoric of "working women" television programs. Many of the films in the series portray a dialectic of "love" and "work" that draws important attention to the deleterious effects of late capitalism—including how women become overworked, underpaid and disconnected from social relationships—that may resonate with wider feminist labor movements. As I argue, however, the dialectic is resolved in problematic ways; women in the series are rewarded with romantic (heteronormative) love only when they accept career promotions or reject corporate culture by embracing a "do-what-you-love" ideology, one that seems transformative but ultimately depoliticizes both work and the workplace in ways that minimize recent feminist labor struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the relationship between direct measurement of X-ray pulsar angular position and second-order correlation is analyzed by classical statistical optics. On this basis, a scheme for measuring pulsar angle position is put forward on account of X-ray band intensity correlation, which is expected to achieve a positioning accuracy of 10 Mas. Finally, the connection between positioning accuracy and complex correlation in the intensity correlation measurement is studied. Also, main factors that affected the measurement are analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every Christmas season children's hospitals in the United States are flooded with gift donations. Businesses, service organizations, and the public deliver carloads of new toys, puzzles, games, books, electronics, sports equipment, art supplies, cosmetics, blankets, and clothing for sick children. The practice is so common and widespread that donors rarely ask whether they may donate, what types of donations are welcome, and when and where they should deliver their donations. Based on ethnographic observations of holiday gifting at University Children's Hospital, a nationally ranked pediatric hospital on the West Coast, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the implicit cultural beliefs that guide holiday gifting practices. Eschewing the popular rhetoric of American hyper-consumption and hedonism, I use a Durkheimian framework to argue that holiday gifting in children's hospital is a sacred ritual. The data presented describe the wide-ranging variety of donors—from Boy Scouts to nightclub strippers—who journey to the hospital bearing gifts. Drawing on sacred conceptualizations of childhood and gifting in American culture, I argue that children's hospitals are more than medico-scientific institutions. They represent sacred unifying spaces and the heart of their local communities where individuals and organizations come to privately and publicly reaffirm their moral commitments to society through holiday gifting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the motivation for the design and construction of a beamline at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) for the use of UK material scientists. Although originally focused on the study of magnetic materials, the beamline has been running for 20 years and currently supports a very broad range of science as evidenced by the research topics highlighted in this article. We describe how the beamline will adapt to align with the ESRF's upgrade to a diffraction limited storage ring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite claims of a so-called war on Christmas, Christmas in the United States is still celebrated widely in public spaces. The question is why some people ignore, what some scholars call, their Christian privilege? In this paper, we explore the ignoring of Christian privilege in one public space: USA elementary schools. Using 27 interviews, we show that most of the teachers/administrators adopted what we are calling Christian ignorance -- a structural ignorance rooted in normative cognitive schemas that creates and maintains Christian privilege. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many older women experience the loss of a spouse or partner in later life. This paper explores older women's experiences of Christmas in order to locate process and meaning in relation to the transition of later life widowhood. Drawing on longitudinal data, derived from three in-depth interviews conducted over 18 months with 26 older widows, this paper presents a number of themes from the women's accounts of their Christmas celebrations and their Christmas cards. The importance of continuity, social relations and autonomy is situated in three emergent themes: ‘Family, intergenerational ties and tradition’, ‘Friendships, organisational ties and reciprocity’ and ‘Personal continuity and activation’. The significance of discontinuity, change and mediation is illustrated through three emergent themes: ‘Christmas as a catalyst for change’, ‘We are all widows’ and ‘Negotiating change with others’. The findings, including the positive aspects of continuity and discontinuity, demonstrate that Christmas is a potent symbol of both personal and social transformation during later life widowhood, and that the management of transition incorporates not only social relations, but also personal agency and flexibility. This paper further challenges the predominantly negative stereotype of older widows and illustrates their resilience and growth in the later stages of life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Highlights • A unique solicitation procedure is used to test if altruism increases in December. • Data covers nine years and more than 50 million decisions. • December is associated with a 14% increase in the probability to donate. • The December effect is equivalent to a 32% discount on charitable giving. • Half the December effect persist in January. Abstract Christmas is a holiday of Christian origin with traditions that emphasize prosocial behavior, including charitable giving, but does it actually make people more altruistic ? Responding to this question poses a challenge because of the confounding factors of charitable tax breaks, reciprocity motives, pressure from the solicitors and persuasive campaigns for giving that are more prevalent in December. In this paper, I use a unique solicitation situation where these factors are eliminated. Based on nine years of data and more than 50 million giving decisions, I provide three main results. First, the month of December is associated with a 14% increase in the probability to make a donation, thereby providing strong support to the notion of seasonal altruism. Second, exploiting a reform that changed the price of giving, I find that this December effect is equivalent to a 32% discount on charitable giving. Finally, half of the December increase in generosity persists into January before returning to the baseline in February. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Easter and Christmas are the most important events in the Christian calendar. Despite their global reach and cultural significance, astonishingly little is known about the festivals' genesis. Equally obscure is our understanding of the animals that have come to be associated with these celebrations - notably the Christmas Turkey and the Easter 'Bunny' (brown hare and the European rabbit). Like Christianity, none of these animals are native to Britain and the timing and circumstances of their arrivals are poorly understood, often obfuscated by received wisdom. This paper firstly refines the bio-cultural histories of the species that, in contemporary Britain, form integral parts of Easter and Christmas festivities. Secondly, we celebrate the non-native species which have played such an important role in the creation of Britain's cultural heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the epistemology of speculative theology. It presents an account of how to recognize the legitimate theoretical constructs of speculative theology in the aftermath of the dialectical theology of Karl Barth. Using the conceptual tools developed by Barth, the paper focuses on his account of the Miracle of Christmas in Kirchliche Dogmatik vol. I/2 in order to uncover three criteria for determining the truth-value of the various theoretical constructs of speculative theology: 1) the particularity of its meta-vocabulary, 2) the dialectics of judgment and affirmation, and 3) its distinctive pneumatology. Concretely, the paper draws on Barth's theoretical and practical insights from the second Romans commentary from 1922 up to the Kirchliche Dogmatik I/ 1, and shows how his development results in a determinate form of conceptual mediation that could profitably be called speculative reading. The paper then traces how the immanent rationality of revelation structures Barth's reading of the Miracle of Christmas and brings to expression a series of distinctive conceptual characteristics that allow us to measure the truth value of his interpretation. Finally, the paper ends with a critical engagement of Robert Jenson's influential account of Barth's pneumatological deficit in the Kirchliche Dogmatik. Die wissenschaftliche Arbeit untersucht die Erkenntnistheorie der spekulativen Theologie. Sie stellt dar, wie man die legitimen theoretischen Konstrukte der spekulativen Theologie in der Zeit nach der dialektischen Theologie Karl Barths erkennen kann. Mit Hilfe der von Barth entwickelten Begriffswerkzeuge konzentriert sich die Arbeit auf seinen Bericht über das Weihnachtswunder in Kirchliche Dogmatik Band I/2, um die drei Kriterien für die Bestimmung des Wahrheitswerts der verschiedenen theoretischen Konstrukte der spekulativen Theologie sichtbar zu machen: 1) die Besonderheit seines Meta- Vokabulars, 2) die Dialektik des Urteils und der Bestätigung und 3) seinen unverwechselbaren Pneumatologie. Konkret greift die Arbeit auf Barths theoretische und praktische Einblicke aus der zweiten Römer-Kommentar von 1922 bis zu der Kirchlichen Dogmatik I/1 zurück und zeigt, wie seine Entwicklungsergebnisse zu einer bestimmten Form der konzeptionellen Mediation führen, die vorteilhafte als spekulative Lese bezeichnet werden könnte. Die Arbeit zeichnet dann nach, wie die immanente Rationalität der Offenbarung Barths Lesen des Weihnachtswunders strukturiert und eine Reihe von markanten konzeptionellen Merkmalen zum Ausdruck bringt, die es uns erlaubt den Wahrheitsgehalt seiner Interpretation zu beurteilen. Die Arbeit schließt mit einer kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit Robert Jensons Einfluss auf Barths pneumatologisches Defizit in der Kirchlichen Dogmatik ab. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/aim: Widowhood in later life is a transition experienced by many older people, particularly older women. This paper explores the challenges encountered by a group of older women experiencing the loss of a spouse or partner. Methods: The data is drawn from a longitudinal study exploring the significance of personal communities in managing the transition of later life widowhood. A series of qualitative interviews were conducted with 26 older widows (62-90 years of age) over a period of 18 months. Interview transcripts were subjected to thematic analysis. Results: This paper presents a number of themes from the women's accounts of their Christmas celebrations and their Christmas cards, which illustrate the challenges to managing widowhood in later life. Themes included: family friction, dependence, additional losses, over commitment, passivity and feeling different. Conclusion: The findings reveal that Christmas can be an isolating and excluding experience for some older women, and that widowhood can be compounded by age-related illness, and the loss of social relationships and roles in later life. The research has a number of implications for practice with older women who are widows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many older people in Britain spend Christmas day alone. The Christmas period may be especially difficult for older people who are socially isolated, living with dementia or who have physical impairments, and may feel particularly marginalised at this time of year. This paper draws on evaluative research findings from a community Christmas event held in December 2014 at the University of Salford for older people and their carers who would be on their own on Christmas day. A multi-method approach was employed, seven guests took part in semi-structured interviews to explore their experiences and perceptions of the event, seven staff and student volunteers participated in a group interview to explore and discuss their participation in the event. Data collection took place during April and May 2015. Interview transcripts were subjected to thematic analysis. Three overarching themes were identified from the interviews: 'reasons for participants attending the event', 'a different Christmas day: the impact on guests and volunteers', and 'learning, planning and moving forwards'. The findings illustrate that a range of people participated in the Christmas day event for a variety of reasons. The event itself had a positive impact, including the shared experience of social belonging, for all involved. There are tangible longer term benefits as a result of the event, such as ongoing contact between participants and the development of supportive networks in the local community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On a number of fourth and fifth century calendars, a block of feasts commemorating Stephen, James, John, Peter, and Paul immediately follows 25 December. Contemporary studies have lost sight of the rationale for its position. This paper defends a proposal of Hans Lietzmann and suggests that the community that created the block recognized Christmas as the starting point of the sanctoral cycle. This community elected to place the memorials of Christianity's earliest confessors at the head of this annual order, symbolizing their historical priority over other martyrs. Stephen occupied the first of these dates precisely so his commemoration could precede that of every other confessor on the calendar, a position that illustrates the intensity of his cult in the late fourth-fifth centuries. The study proceeds to develop this insight into a framework capable of explaining similar commemorations on other early Christian calendars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on the use of illustrations of the Moon in images of Santa Claus, on Christmas gift-wrapping paper and in children's books, in two countries which have been important in shaping the image of Santa Claus and his predecessor Sinterklaas: the USA and the Netherlands. The appearance of the Moon in Halloween illustrations is also considered. The lack of either knowledge concerning the physical origin of the Moon's phases, or interest in understanding them, is found to be widespread in the Netherlands, but is also clearly present in the USA, and is quite possibly global. Certainly incomplete, but surely representative, lists that compile occurrences of both scientifically correct and scientifically incorrect gift- wrapping paper and children's books are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides some gift ideas for your business during the Christmas season. These gift ideas include membership to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), a new vehicle especially those included in the International Van of the Year list, a cross-cut shredder model, and an access to mobile email using OpenHand. The paper also suggests some useful online references as well as sales books. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland is the self-proclaimed ‘official home of Santa Claus.’ However, in recent years, after several warm and snowless season starts, Christmas tourism businesses have expressed concern about the future of the region's winter tourism industry. This paper examines the challenges of winter tourism operators to adapt to changing environmental conditions by surveying the responses of tourists to potential changes in winter conditions. In the light of climate change projections, maintaining the attractive image of a snow-covered winter wonderland may become impossible. Results indicate that tourists react negatively to estimated changes and planned adaptation mechanisms. This situation may force tourism entrepreneurs and destination managers to reconsider the consequences of current adaptation strategies and develop new attractions and marketing strategies in order to attract new markets and/or rebrand the destination. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]