TINSEL: A Search for America’s Christmas Present, by Hank Stuever. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 331 pages; $24.

Hank Stuever does his homework. As a Washington Post reporter, we expect no less, but still, this is a writer who paid close attention to those teachers who exhorted him to “show his work.”

The smallest of details can’t escape his eye, from the type of light bulbs used in a massive Yule yard display to the names and directions for multiple subdivisions in the town of Frisco, the fast-growing exurban city outside Dallas that he selects as the setting of his engrossing search for the modern meaning of Christmas.
Yet his self-confessed obsessive note-taking never prevents Stuever from getting the big picture, and his spot-on observations about how modern America celebrates the holiday — in all its retail madness — are satisfying and illuminating.

For instance, he pinpoints that collective societal guilt (that you thought only you suffered) that hits home when we hear from economists that all our Christmas spending is somehow insufficient, that consumers have fallen short of some nebulous retail goal set months before.

“Hundreds of billions of dollars and still a bummer, like having a person on our Christmas list we can never fully please, who acts out a key scene in any family’s holiday dysfunction drama.

“Economy: You never get me what I want.

“Consumer: What? I buy you everything you ask for! Every year!

“Economy: I still feel empty.”

It’s these sly perceptions that set Tinsel above the ordinary, as Stuever insinuates himself into the lives of three Frisco families and follows them through the 2006 Christmas season. (The book’s conclusion provides updates from the subsequent two holiday seasons, providing nice closure to many of the stories.)

We stand in line at Best Buy on Black Friday with Caroll Cavazos, peer over the shoulders of Jeff and Bridgette Trykoski, the young couple who use roughly 50,000 lights to turn their ordinary home into the most famous light display in the county, and accompany Tammie Parnell to crafts fairs to find deals on garlands, Santas, candles, angels, ornaments and more to stock her side business of decorating people’s homes for Christmas.
Along the way, we are treated to Stuever’s incisive yet tender comments on the chaotic holiday that has morphed into Christmas.

As Caroll waits in line, “she wonders if maybe this is how memories are made now. Maybe the shopping is the memory itself. … While it may look absurd on the news, Black Friday also can be seen as a shopaholic’s annual Woodstock, or the American version of the running of the bulls at Pamplona. Is Black Friday really any more ridiculous?”

Stuever’s talent for drawing apt parallels draws the reader along, and he has a knack for keeping you engaged. His gift for ending chapters and segments with startling visual images, pithy summations, a fabulous quote or his thought of the moment creates a glide effect that makes the book difficult to put down.

And why should you? It’s the holiday season, after all.