Flights of Fancy

Summer is here, time for kids’ action adventure. Reread that opening sentence. Did you think of movies released in the summertime? Or did you think of...

  While most adults are eager to indulge their children and grandchildren at Christmas, my ethnographic research on Easter (described in my book Flights of...

    Recently, I was waiting in line at a highway rest stop and struck up a conversation with the woman in front of me. Her...

    In my recent talking with kids, Scrooge of London seems to have lost a lot of ground as the definitive morality tale about Christmas...

    October 31st is America’s curious anomaly.  On October’s last day, as trees defoliate and nature ebbs towards the deadness of winter, parents mark the...

    During the years 2005 to 2012, when I conducted research on July 4th family rituals, the United States imported — mostly from China —...

Mythology is a living entity of culture in which cross-generational discourse can play a lively role. American Christmas and its Santa Claus mythology are...