The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Abstract

During the twentieth century, Christmas became a truly global holiday. The spread of the holiday, however, produced conflicts regarding Christmas’s meaning and the way it was practised by different communities. As different peoples encountered a variety of Christmas traditions at local, national, and global levels, ambivalence emerged about the changes in customary observances such encounters potentially facilitated. The identification of Christmas traditions with specific national communities placed the holiday at the centre of the century’s nationalist politics, especially those of totalitarian regimes, as well as contributing to the experiences of the two world wars and the Cold War. Christmas’s increasing commercialization likewise raised concerns about whether it was becoming too secular. The disputed character of the holiday attests to the important role Christmas continued to play annually for a large swathe of the global populace as a holiday capable of producing a range of intense emotional responses.