Thanks, everyone, who sent pictures of Tinsel in stores. I got pics from all over, and we have two first-place winners, and second and third place winner. The first-place winners get a signed book and a gift card to the bookstore of their choice. The other two get a book. And there are honorable mentions, who get my lurve.

Check ‘em out!

First place: Judy Coode found Tinsel in Kramerbooks in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, Oct. 17, but there’s sort of a big asterisk on her win, because I was with her and helped her find it, on that shelf of current nonfiction by the window. It wasn’t easy.

The other first place winner goes to Lisa Mueller in St. Louis! Check out happy Greyson in Pudd’nHead Books in Webster Groves, Mo., on Oct. 23. I love this picture. I also love Pudd’nHead Books — Nikki, the owner, wrote me in July to tell me how much she liked Tinsel and they’ve invited me to come do a signing, with a very special guest moderator: Curtis Sittenfeld. That event is Wednesday, Dec. 9. As soon as I have time and venue details, I will spread the word. Way to go, Lisa and Greyson!

Second place goes to Terrence Thornton, who found Tinsel in the West Patterson, N.J., Barnes & Noble on Oct. 24. I have heard a rumor that B&N will give Tinsel some front-of-store display action starting around Thanksgiving, but for now, you can find it shelved in one of my favorite sections: Cultural Studies. (Like, in there with the sociology of tattoos!)

Third place goes to Vince Patton in Portland, Ore., who found Tinsel in the new arrivals aisle at the venerable Powell’s Books on Oct. 25. Vince knows my sister, Mary Stuever (somehow, I forget how), and he’s also a big Nancy Nall fan, so it’s a small world out there, filled with copies of Tinsel that need to be bought. I’ll be reading at Powell’s on Friday night, Dec. 4.

Congratulations, all. I’m signing and putting your books in envelopes today and they’ll go out in Monday’s mail.

And there are some honorable mentions, too. I’ve already shared this photo, (left) of the nice Tinsel display in the Stonebriar Centre Barnes & Noble, sent in earlier this week by Brett Jensen.

The ever-devoted Derba (Laura Froelich) spied Tinsel on the Sociology shelf in the Preston-Royal Borders in Dallas.

And I’ll sign off with this great picture of Michael’s mom (and my favorite Christmas morning eggs strata maker), Christine Neperud, looking lovely with Tinsel in … hey, where is this? I’m guessing suburban Maryland, somewhere.

Before I get all too wrapped up in the release of Tinsel, I got an e-mail recently that brings the real business of books into rather sharp focus.

The e-mail is from Picador publishers, which is the paperback imprint for Henry Holt and other publishers that are all part of the same company. They’re the ones who put out the handsome paperback edition of my first book, Off Ramp, and now it’s time to say goodbye. It’s been a little more than four good years in paperback (five since the hardcover). They write:

… Unfortunately, the current rate of sale for the trade paperback edition of Off Ramp does not justify our continuing to keep the book in print.

… I would like to offer you the opportunity to buy some of this remaindered stock at the price of …

This is the natural cycle of things, and it’s one of the final items you read over in your book contract when you sign here and initial there with such optimism. When a book goes out of print, the publisher notifies the author. (I think there’s even an appellate process in some cases, but maybe not; I’d have to go through the 2003-04 boxes and find the contract.) At that time, they are required to offer you a chance to buy part or all of the remaining stock. And yes, I would like a few dozen, thanks. Put ‘em on my Visa.

You didn’t think every book ever printed remains in print, do you?

There are lots and lots of copies of Off Ramp out there, hardcover and softcover, and I look forward to encountering them in used-book stores everywhere I go, for years. Sometimes when I see them, I “rescue” them and buy them, because I always have a use for them. (I also look to see if it’s signed, and to whom? So far, none of them have said “To Mom,” so that’s good. Today’s tip: If you sell used books that were authored and signed by people you know, consider using the broad strokes of a fat, black Sharpie to lessen the blow when you sell them or give them to charity. Unless your author friend became famous and died since the signing, then hold out for top dollar.)

Spare copies of Off Ramp were invaluable to me in the early stages of working on what became Tinsel. They acted as a calling card — I would give people a copy to help them understand that a.) I really am a writer, who’s really working on a serious book and b.) here is exactly what sort of writing I have done and might do about you. I must have given away a few dozen copies in Texas in 2006 and 2007 while I hunted for the right people to write about in Tinsel.

You ask: How many copies of Off Ramp sold, overall? Excellent question. I don’t know, because the sales statements have not come with regularity. I can tell you those royalty statements are impossible for a neophyte to decipher, except, of course, I do know what a minus sign looks like, and the bottom figure is always a minus sign, as regards my advance versus my royalty.

Nevertheless, in the last four years, I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to many journalism and creative writing classes who all read the book as a text and had so many great questions for me about how the stories in it were reported and written. And just when I thought nobody was reading it anymore — even now — an e-mail will arrive from some random reader who found it, read it, and wants to talk about the stories in it. (In fact, when I got this e-mail from the guy at Picador, and the subject line was “Off Ramp,” and I thought, oh, good, it’s been a couple months …)

Sigh. I used to hope that the book would capture a sort of pre-millennial 1990s vibe of modern life, which it does, which it always will, especially as one decade becomes another and then another; and then I hoped it might be useful for journalism and feature-writing teachers to encourage their students to experiment with the newspaper format — which maybe it has been, in a small way.

But as time goes by, I see the stories that are in Off Ramp as more rare and more dear; mainly, no matter the many subjects, they were about me. Even if I was a master scrapbooker and diligent diarist, I could not imagine a better keepsake of who I was and I what I did and who I met and what fascinated me in my 20s and early 30s, so maybe it really is just a selfish little collection. I don’t think too many young men and women in the newspaper biz will ever have the serendipitous, strange fun I got to have, and then? To have a bunch of your clips collected in a book? That will be out there forever? I am rarely proud of much, but I do feel good about that book.

I was a lucky shit. And I still am.

So long, Off Ramp!

(Anyone want to buy a copy? Cheap? Apparently I’m a dealer now, and how could you resist, after this heart-tugging blog entry? See — the shilling never stops.)

UPDATE 11/4/09: A reprieve, for now!

Tinsel fans, I have so enjoyed your snapshots of the book in stores across the country. There are winners of the contest and I will announce them later this week!

The book is definitely out and there’s lots of fun stuff is coming up in the days and weeks ahead. If anyone’s read it, and wants to share a review or comments, please send them to me and I’ll post them — whether good or bad. I’m open to all feedback. Or you can add a review on Amazon, B&N, Goodreads and other sites.

Meanwhile, a Frisco resident sends this beauty — captured today in the Stonebriar Centre Barnes & Noble. Although this is NOT the winner of the prize, it does gladden the heart of this author. I’m looking forward to the reading there on Tuesday, Nov. 17 at 7 p.m.! There are 11 other readings scheduled in November and December, from D.C. to Seattle, so check here and please join me at one of them. I’ll be blogging from the road with stories about how they go. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is still happy to take requests for more bookstore or media appearances — contact info here. THANKS!

Today I drove up to the extremely picturesque Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia for a rare opportunity to hang out for an afternoon with my friend, the fantastic photographer KayLynn Deveney. She and her parents came to Philly for a few days from Albuquerque. KayLynn and I went to lunch and she showed me some amazing new pictures she’s been working on that I’m very jazzed about. I want to write an essay about the pictures to go with the eventual book.

The drive was great — the trees are doing the orangey-golden-J. Crew thing, with accompaniment by a rosy sunset tonight. Somewhere near Havre de Grace, Md., the car radio scan button picked up Baltimore’s Jack-FM doing a blessed act of autopilot programming: It was broadcasting an old episode of “American Top 40″ back when it was hosted by Casey Kasem.

Tonight they were replaying the Top 40 from the weekend of Oct. 19, 1985, and almost totally commercial-free. I listened just as he was starting with #40 (“Dare Me” by the Pointer Sisters) and kept with it until the station faded out, as I was coming down New York Avenue in Washington — up to #26 (“Love Theme from St. Elmo’s Fire” by David Foster), and I wound up wishing the drive would have been longer. I also wished Derba was along for the ride.

Just the other day, I was kvetching to my work buddies that there is just too goddamn much ’80s music in the air these days. We should not be hearing nearly as much as we do in our everyday lives: “Shout” by Tears for Fears in the grocery store, in the mall, on the radio, shuffled up by iPod, etc. I love ’80s music way too much to have to hear it this much.

Ah, but October 1985: That would be fall of senior year of high school for me. Right around Spook House time at the church. Football season. (Big whoop, but I was not immune to the energy around it, the drinking around it.) Rehearsals for “Harvey.” College applications. Friday nights at Lake Hefner. I know better than to romanticize it, and I think 17-year-old Hank Stuever would definitely tell you that he wasn’t nearly as happy as 41-year-old Hank Stuever thinks he was.

Oh, and can I just say, I teared up during the long-distance dedication: A kid in the Philippines asked Casey to play Neil Diamond’s “Heartlight” for his friend Hiroki in Japan. Sang along at the top of my freakin’ lungs, people.

But let’s roll the chart, shall we? I went online and looked up the rest of the show that I didn’t finish listening to… There are some songs on here that had totally been wiped clean from my mind.

40. “Dare Me” — The Pointer Sisters

39. “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)” — John Parr (peaked at no. 1)

38. “C-I-T-Y” — John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band. (Heinous.)

37. “One of the Living” — Tina Turner (the other song from “Beyond Thunderdome”)

36. “So In Love” — Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark (Casey completely baffled by band name: “A foursome from Britain, making their American Top 40 debut, who call themselves …” Let’s not beat around it. I was So In Love wth this song. It went with my paisley dress shirt buttoned up to the top button.)

35. “Broken Wings” — Mr. Mister. It enters the chart! Many an interpretive dance to follow.

34. “Communication”–  Power Station. Well, it’s no “Bang a Gong,” which is why I’d forgotten about it.

33. “Boy in the Box” — Corey Hart. Utter crap. Fame is a slip-n-slide.

32. “Don’t Lose My Number” — Phil Collins. At this point, “No Jacket Required” is growing stale on me, after so much warpy cassette deck love in the summer of ’85. I remember _always_ changing the radio when this was on, or “Take Me Home.”

31. “The Way You Do the Things You Do/My Girl” — Daryl Hall and John Oates with a couple of the Temptations. This sort of music was just DEAD TO ME when I was 17. My sense of Motown was limited to the Big Chill soundtrack, “ABC” by the Jackson 5, Soft-Cell’s remake of “Where Did Our Love Go?” at the end of “Tainted Love,” and Madonna walking back and forth in the Love Saves the Day thrift store scene in Desperately Seeking Susan to the tune of “Respect” by Aretha Franklin. Beyond that, the sound of Motown to new-wavey Hank was like shaking garlic cloves at the vampire. Motown was for the teachers lounge.

30. “Cry” — Godley and Creme. Remember the video? Ben Hollensbe and I used to make fun of it. And there’s that ridiculously pompous ending on the synthy high notes. And Casey said it peaked at, like, #13? Is that right? Too caffeinated to google it right now. Must keep going.

29. “Separate Lives” — Phil Collins and … her. (Marilyn Martin, cq.) Again, SINGING AS LOUD AS I CAN. But what a weird little bit of songwriting. “So you build that wall. (BUILD THAT WALLLLL). Yes you BUILD THAT WALL. (BUILD THA-HAT WA-HALLL!) And you. Make. It. STUH-RONGAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

btw, Michael is now extremely glad he didn’t come on this trip.

28. “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?” — Aretha Franklin. Beats me.

27. “Never” — Heart. This song makes me think of being in Jackie Temple’s Camaro. You are out of your mind if you think there’s any way she will change the station when Heart is on. Best to just sip your wine cooler and wait it out.

26. “Love Theme from St. Elmo’s Fire” — David Foster. At the time, this song made me think of what college was going to be like a year from now, and how romantic it would be: I’d be wearing sweaters and studying and there would be fall leaves and carillon bells, etc. Jump to 1986. Replace “sweaters” with “shorts” and “studying” with “pasting up the At-A-Glance page” and “fall leaves” with “stepping over barf in Biever Hall” and I was right!

Okay, I got home at this point and parked the car — thanks to you, Archived Robot Casey — but I’m going to fill out the rest of the AT40 for 10/19/85 for you here, to see what I missed.

25. “Freedom” — Wham. This song is a dud. But they were about to redeem themselves to me with “I’m Your Man” …

24. “Lay Your Hands” — Thompson Twins. I had more than one paisley shirt.

23. “And We Danced” — The Hooters. Janice Kusbel really pushed the Hooters on us — and Marillion, and Chicago. But in my car, my rules: English Beat, Go-Go’s, Eurythmics, Prince. (Common agreement on Tears for Fears, Yaz, INXS.)

22. “Sunset Grill” — Don Henley.

21. “You Are My Lady” — Freddie Jackson. (I call this Supercuts music. If it was an R&B ballad in the 1980s, I probably only ever heard it under duress, or while getting a haircut.)

20. “Four in the Morning (I Can’t Take it Anymore)” — Night Ranger. (Sorry, I can’t even hum it!)

19. “One Night Love Affair” — Bryan Adams. (Anyone?)

18. “Be Near Me” — ABC. Okay, not only did I have more than one paisley shirt, I also had an army-navy surplus raincoat with a brooch on the lapel. (Come on, be near me. Not on me or anything, just near me.)

17. “We Built This City” — Starship. I remember a bunch of drunk girls singing along to this at Lake Hefner one night and thinking what a bunch of dipshits. They built their city on Forenza sweaters and Bartles & Jaymes.

16. “I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down” — Paul Young. (Howzitgo?)

15. “You Belong to the City” — Glenn Frey. Thus began a lot of steam coming from grates, 1985-ish to 1991-ish.

14. “Dress You Up” — Madonna. Gays, back me up on this: Remember how tricky it was, liking Madonna and keeping your closet organized and secure?

13. “Cherish” — Kool & The Gang. This song meant the dance was over and everyone was already at the after-party you weren’t invited to, but thank God your date was invited.

12. “Lovin’ Every Minute of It” — Loverboy. Very Putnam City.

11. “I’m Going Down” — Bruce Springsteen. Don’t get me started on what would happen when I would get home from school, get the mail, and see his face on the cover of Rolling Stone — again.

10. “Head Over Heels” — Tears for Fears. I used to do my homework to this album, from beginning to end. Did I ever tell you how I had to be a “single dad” to my “egg baby” in marriage class? There weren’t enough girls in the class, or that’s how I remember it.

9. “Fortress Around Your Heart” — Sting. Which brings us to Derba’s best Chi Rhoan headline ever, atop her effusive concert review: AUDIENCE STUNG.

8. “Dancing in the Street” — David Bowie and Mick Jagger. Did anyone have those yellow Reebok shoes, besides Jagger?

7. “Money for Nothing” — Dire Straits. I’m sort of glad my drive was over and I didn’t have to listen to all of these TOP HITS, because all AT40 charts culminate in the songs that were overplayed back then and are thus forever “meh” for me. Casey says it’s October ’85, and this was a big summertime hit in ’85, which means the radio stations were still playing it too much.

6. “Lonely Ol’ Night” — John Still-Cougar-Then Mellencamp: Who were these songs actually marketed for? I lived in Oklahoma, around muddy “cricks” and lakes and bugs and county-line roads and thunderclouds and li’l pink houses and all that shit, and if you wanted songs about it, YOU’D LISTEN TO COUNTRY STATIONS. He would have been much more famous in 1972 instead of 1985, back there with Jim Croce and that sort of thing. I didn’t buy his MTV sheen.

5. “Miami Vice Theme” — Jan Hammer. Didn’t wear it, didn’t watch it.

4. “Oh, Sheila” — Ready for the World. I can’t remember — did this just sound like it had something to do with the Prince syndicate, or was it just a ripoff?

3. “Part-Time Lover” — Stevie Wonder. See what I mean? Weren’t numbers 40 through 25 on this chart so much more intriguing? Even back then, this would have been dentist-office/Supercuts muzak.

2. “Saving All My Love for You” — Whitney Houston. About whom I STILL don’t give a flip. Really, in 1985, I considered the presence of songs like this on the radios around me to be like some giant vagina had fallen out of the sky and crushed the entire city. (And I hadn’t even heard “The Greatest Love of All” yet.)

1. “Take On Me” — a-ha. Loved this song in AUGUST 1985 and couldn’t stand it by October 18, 1985, so take that, Casey.

Phew. Getting all the way to No. 1 reminds me of what I used to have to do every Sunday night, about this time, in the mid-1980s, as a way to cleanse my soul of “American Top 40″:

Watch 120 Minutes on MTV, of course.

This is from the press kit assembled by the extremely helpful Megan Wilson at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I’m keeping it handy here so I can remember what my book’s about. Also I want Oprah or her minions to be able to easily find it in case they’ve foolishly misplaced their copy.

A CONVERSATION WITH HANK STUEVER

Before we talk about Tinsel, what’s your take on the economy and how it will affect Christmas 2009?

Shopocalypse! In our time, the Christmas season has become a linchpin in the American and global economies—accounting for about one-fifth of all shopping purchases in the United States and even more in some sectors like jewelry, electronics, and apparel. This is important because consumer spending drives more than two-thirds of the U.S. economy. By one estimate, we spend half a trillion dollars on Christmas presents, décor, and entertaining every year—more than we spend fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A percentage point up or down in what American shoppers spend (or don’t spend) at Christmas has worldwide implications, especially in Asia and Latin America, where most of our goods are made. In 2008, we actually spent less than we spent the Christmas before—down 2.8 percent according to the National Retail Federation, and the first time it decreased since the NRF started measuring it. Americans are maxed out; consumer confidence levels dropped in 2008 to the lowest ever recorded. This was the end of a shopping binge that lasted more than a decade. This year we will really see if people’s attitudes and priorities have changed much at the mall.

We live in a Catch-22 when it comes to Christmas: Many of us dream of simple, “down home” Christmases that involve togetherness, warmth, laughter—de-emphasizing retail purchases. But if too many of us chose to have a less commercial Christmas and cut our spending on gifts to, say, less than $100 overall, the effect on the stock market, global trade, manufacturing, and jobs would be a downward spiral. We are stuck sustaining a consumer economy at any cost. Likewise we are stuck with a mega-Christmas.

How did you get interested in writing a book about Christmas?

Christmas is the largest communal event in American life. Even people who don’t celebrate it can’t escape it completely. It crosses just about all forms of our culture, faith, and lifestyles. It is born of religion, tradition, commerce, and media, with some ancient roots in winter solstice celebrations that predate the birth of Christ.

No matter what stories I’ve worked on in two decades as a journalist, they were all essentially about how we live. Christmas dominates “how we live” in one six-week bonanza. It’s bigger than anything.

It’s a big subject. How did you narrow your focus?

I wanted to tell the story of the enormity of Christmas, but in an absolutely human way—almost in microcosm. As a backdrop to Tinsel, I wanted to take readers on a humorous and somewhat absurd journey deep into the center of America and the plastic heart of crowded malls, competitive holiday bazaars, collectible snow villages, Angel Trees, extravagant megachurch Nativity pageants, sweet-faced nanas and grammas wearing BeDazzled reindeer sweaters, megawatt light displays, genuinely bearded Santas, and McMansion rooms decked out in high-end artificial greenery.

But ultimately Christmas is an emotional story. Some people love it deeply and some people don’t, and it has this strange power to conjure up both joy and melancholia. I’ve always been fascinated by how people act at Christmas—how hard we seek its happiness and beauty, and how quickly the season can turn blue. I’m interested in the ways people work to preserve (or improve on) a collective myth. The retail experience is a parallel story.

You decided to follow a few families through Christmas. Why?

There are a lot of Yule clichés out there in popular culture, most of them on TV or in movies. Christmas is told one of two ways fictionally: sweet, soft-focus, and sentimental (Hallmark specials, A Christmas Story, Thomas Kinkade paintings, Nutcracker ballets); or in over-the-top comedies (National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Bad Santa, Fred Claus) that emphasize its excess and ridiculousness. Christmas is most often rendered in broad, general strokes. Nearly all of American literature or cinema tells Christmas in a purely fictional or loosely historical framework.

Very few journalists have tried to capture Christmas as it is actually lived in the present day. That was my book proposal: to move to a brand-new suburb with lots of chain retail shopping and dining (so I could look closely at the economic experience of the holiday) and focus intensely on the lives of a handful of families as they celebrated Christmas—down to every last present bought and received as well as what they eat, what they pray for, who they are. I wanted the story to be as true as it could possibly be, even if that got in the way of a standard “happy” Christmas ending.

You moved to the Dallas suburb of Frisco, Texas, to gather material for this book. How long were you there, and why did you pick Frisco?

Tinsel follows three Christmases: The first is 2006, which seems like an eternity ago, because it was back when most Americans believed the economy was strong. I lived in Frisco, Texas, from August 2006 until February 2007. Then I went back in 2007 and 2008—a dozen more trips of various lengths, especially when Christmas came around again. By the third Christmas, the economy had changed and so had some people’s lives.

In 2006, Frisco was one of the fastest-growing suburbs in the country. Its population had gone from 6,000 in the early 1990s to about 90,000 when I arrived, and it passed 100,000 by the time I finished my book. Frisco has one of the highest concentrations of retail square-footage in the country—more than 5 million square feet of shopping venues in a single square mile area—almost all of which has been built since 2000.

In deciding where to set Tinsel, I studied U.S. Census data and market demographics of several suburbs (or in the more current term, “exurbs”) outside Atlanta, Charlotte, Kansas City, Denver, and Columbus, among other cities. I was drawn to Frisco for a lot of reasons: Everything there seemed brand-new—schools, infrastructure, neighborhoods, malls, huge grocery stores, highways—which has always fascinated me. Even the people seemed new, just arrived themselves, always smiling, reproducing, and spending like crazy. What’s it like to live in a world that did not exist a few years earlier? Many people are turned off by such sprawl. In a strange way, I find it alluring and certainly a fascinating place to study. To me it’s the twenty-first-century America, both for good and for bad.

Finally, I was lured to Frisco by its churches, of which there are many. I also grew up in the Bible Belt (Oklahoma City); I knew that to find the best example of a mega-Christmas in America, I had to go where the people most love baby Jesus.

How did you find the people that you wrote about?

I worked the way I always have as a reporter, which is to introduce myself to as many people as possible in town. I went to at least two different church services every weekend, and during the week went to community meetings, job fairs, and of course arts-and-crafts bazaars. I talked to waitresses, bartenders, store clerks, gym trainers, the Rotary, the Junior League—asking people whom they know who might fit the bill. I went to the big mall in Frisco, Stonebriar Centre, nearly every day and sometimes twice a day. (I even worked out once with the moms in the mall’s StrollerFit morning exercise class.) I hung out in a local Christmas boutique a lot. Often, I’d approach people out of the blue (which is always weird—for both of us) or I’d call up and make an appointment for a general interview, off-the-record or on-, with a city council member, say, or a pastor, or a business owner, or a counselor who works with families.

I arrived about four months before Christmas and set a goal: Tell five people a day about the project and give them my card. This took me all over Frisco and another nearby suburb, Plano. I got some great leads on potential characters, all of which I put up on a bulletin board in my rented bedroom, so I could organize them and think about who should be in the book. Of course, quite a few said NO THANKS. It’s a big thing to ask. Would you let a stranger spend Christmas with your family, while he takes notes on everything?

Whom did you wind up following—and why?

Finding Jeff and Bridgette Trykoski was easy, because when it comes to Christmas, they are famous in Frisco for having the house with the most amazing light show—all sorts of people told me about their house early on. I was drawn to them because of the lights but also because their personalities—how their relationship works—immediately interested me.

Then there’s Tammie Parnell, a busy stay-at-home wife and mother of two kids who lives in a very nice, gated neighborhood in Frisco. I lucked into her by putting the word out there—someone told me about her and gave me her e-mail address. Tammie has a small business on the side, called Two Elves with a Twist, decorating people’s houses for Christmas. Tammie and I hit it off right away when we met at a church bazaar in October. Her energy level mesmerizes and exhausts me.

Even luckier was finding Caroll Cavazos. I was trying to find a family that loves to get up early on Black Friday and hit the sales. I was also still looking for a family where someone is employed at a big-box store. And I was looking for a single mother to follow. None of my leads had panned out quite right. I got up early on Black Friday and was interviewing people in the Best Buy parking lot before dawn—and that’s where I met Caroll and her daughter Marissa. As we talked, Caroll told me her son Ryan works at Best Buy. I stuck with them because Caroll struck me as utterly genuine in her feelings and beliefs. To my everlasting gratitude, all three families let me in for the next two years, in an intimate way.

You seem to walk a fine line between making fun of people and portraying them in a tender way. How do you expect them to react to reading about themselves?

My approach to this kind of nonfiction is to listen, listen, listen. To sit still in a room and try not to draw attention to myself, but just listen, observe, take good notes, and, with permission, make occasional tape recordings. I like to go wherever the people I’m writing about are going and do whatever they’re doing. (I decorated a lot of trees with Tammie!)

That’s the fun part, but eventually you have to write a book, as true as it can be but also as entertaining as it can be. Life really is funny at times, and I like to portray people’s behaviors, thoughts, quirks, and idiosyncrasies as best I can—along with some of my own hang-ups and thoughts. This is a risky and even subjective kind of journalism. I don’t try to be mean or snide, but I also want to tell it as I see it. Tinsel is my version of our time together and my take on this particular world of malls, churches, and big houses. The risk is that people will dislike the way you’ve portrayed them.

I can’t predict how Jeff and Bridgette, Tammie, or Caroll will react to the book, nor can I predict how it will be received in and around Frisco. I think you can tell that I like all of these people very much. I worked hard to get the tone right.

What was the most surprising thing you learned about Christmas while researching and writing Tinsel?

I don’t think I’d ever stopped to think how much of what we consider to be very old ways of Christmas are in fact rather recent. Our hearts are deeply devoted to the Christmas traditions that evolved in America in the early- to mid-nineteenth century up through the late twentieth century—Santa Claus, the chimney, the stockings, the presents, Charles Dickens, wrapping paper, decorative tastes, lights, meals, Black Friday sales, football on TV, the Charlie Brown special. Aside from the religious aspect, our biggest legends and social norms of Christmas are not much more than a century old. Of course, much of it has trace origins in events and customs that are much older, going back millennia, but so much of it is manufactured myth.

This idea leads me to think of Christmas as a metaphor for so much in our lives, the realities that we convince ourselves of, which are really just mythological. A lot of the economic boom in the 1990s and 2000s turned out to be make-believe. The emptiness that we feel sometimes as a shopaholic culture is definitely rooted in a sense of pretending that new stuff makes us feel better. That’s a lot like being a kid on Christmas morning—with euphoria, disappointment, and eventual ennui, all rolled into one.

I always knew Christmas was pretty complicated stuff, deep down. I try to deal with my own mixed feelings about it in the book as well. What surprised me most is that Christmas can still make me cry.

If you find it in a bookstore, take a picture of it, and e-mail me. You might also win a gift card to the bookstore of your choice. For the original posting of the rules, go here.

I realize it’s not where you’re looking. Keep looking. Any day, anywhere. I know for a fact this contest can be won in Portland, Dallas, D.C., New York and Philadelphia, if someone still wants to win it. Still not finding it? Are you in the …

Hat-tip to Bridgette Trykoski, who e-mailed me this photo today. Now get to it!

Nice, compact write-up of Tinsel by Anna Davies on p. 209 of the November issue of Redbook, on newsstands now.

Anna was a solid interviewer and I am glad to be in Redbook (2.2 million circulation!), thus I am granting her very special dispensation from my ban on “Call it” leads, which I’ve campaigned against unsuccessfully for years. Anna did something smart with Tinsel — she translated it as a guide for harried Redbook readers to cope with Christmas problems and family dramas, with the headline “Your happier-holiday handbook”:

Call it the ultimate holiday drop-in. For three seasons, journalist Hank Stuever followed three very different families during December, trailing them on mall crawls, gift exchanges, and religious services, then chronicling his observations in his new book, Tinsel. Here, Stuever’s top three tips for making your holidays a little happier …

Oh, you want the three tips, do you? Well, you’ll just have to pick up a copy of Redbook at the checkout line, won’tcha?

Boy, I am definitely going to keep this picture handy when people tell me Tinsel is too “negative” and bums them out about Christmas. Check out Wharton business school professor Joel Waldfogel’s new book:

I totally have to send this to my editor, Andrea — after all our go-arounds in the hunt for the right tone and feel of a nonfiction book about Christmas. Here’s her worst nightmare! Yes, rush right out and buy copies of Scroogenomics for the whole family! They’ll like it so much better than a Best Buy gift card. (Actually, I’ve skimmed through it a little. Obviously there’s a lot of logic here — Christmas is out of control, etc., here let’s plot it out on a chalkboard and call the whole thing off. Except what about people? Crazy, wonderful, wasteful people?)

Here’s the video trailer for the book. (Don’t you know that the only way to get people to buy a book anymore is to throw together a three-minute movie?)

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt arranged to have this done. Charles Halpin at Bookstream Inc. made it happen and a very nice videographer named Herb, from Silver Spring, came over to my house to set up lights and get me to talk to the camera for two hours. Yes, that’s my home office — behind me is the bulletin board upon which my insanity played out for the last few years. And a cameo appearance by the bowling pin lamp I bought in Austin in the 1990s and the Harvey Girls lampshade I found a few years later while visiting Laura Trujillo in Phoenix, c. 2002.

Big shout-out to Michael Wichita, my long-suffering BF, who shot nearly all of the Frisco footage when I dragged him to Texas for Thanksgiving and Black Friday in 2007.

Let me say right now, I have never been a fan of watching myself on the tube, and that includes the YouTube. (“A-mer-i-cuh,” he tells the camera, like it’s a word no one’s ever heard before, like it needs to be said the way a teenage girl says “duh” to her dad.) But my embarrassment knob is dialed down very low these days, down to the “shameless” indicator, because I have a book to sell. So, roll the tape! And feel free to share it with every last one of your friends on the Internets.

The Washington Post, my employer, is launching a redesign on Monday. It’s not an extreme makeover by any stretch, but it will be enough to get some readers upset, I guarantee. Already there’s been some kvetchin’ about the Sunday Magazine, which was the first to walk around in its new heels and new hairstyle. Erik Wemple of City Paper has all the analysis you need about that — the real change isn’t so much the look of the magazine as the end of an era of 8,000-word features.

Erik, ever astute, also noticed our revamped Weather page, which launched a few days early (though I wager that the type styles on it will change on Monday).

Really it’s about type. And this is a farewell. Since about 1984, Post articles in the print edition have been set in Century Old Style. For a long, long time, I considered Century Old Style to be the best way to read newspaper work. Maybe because I always wanted to work at the Post. I’ve become so used to seeing my work set in that font over the last 10 years that it’s difficult to imagine anything else.

Well, starting Monday, it will be in something else. We’re switching to a font called Miller. It’s already in use at the Sunday mag, and you see it in a lot of other magazines — I think New York magazine uses it. I like it. And, in a complete coinkydink, Tinsel is set in Miller too. (Shout out to Melissa Lotfy, who designed all the inside type for Tinsel and did a marvy job.)

I’m a font and design nerd, and my passions in that realm are unrequited. My oldest friends remember that, back in the beginning, I was into newspaper design much more than I was into newspaper reporting and writing. I’ve always sort of felt that I missed my calling.

Do I love everything about the Post redesign? No. I do like much of it, but  I think it could have been a little more daring, especially with the daily version of the Style flag. (The one they’ll be using for Sunday is much cooler — a font called Big Figgins.) I do know that it takes a couple weeks to get used to any redesign. I’m curious what people will think. I have no doubt that the redesign will be interpreted into the epic, blogospheric story of our imminent doom, etc., as told by the press critics and anyone else who can’t wait for newspapers to die.

Another thing? We’re losing “Washington Post Staff Writer” off our bylines. That also feels like a small part of some larger grief process. All we do now, it sometimes seems, is let go and look bravely ahead. Yet, in the scheme of things, I can let that small appellation go. I am still very proud to be a Washington Post staff writer, whether it says so or not.