Tinsel: A Search for America’s Christmas Present
By: Hank Stuever / Narrated By: Ray Porter
Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
A Blue state guy chronicles Red state Christmases—Love it!
First, let me say that Ray Porter does a PHENOMENAL job with narration (and if you listen to Tinsel, that word, “phenomenal” will crack you up)! He’s following the lives of three families, total Red state Texas-types who are living and celebrating in up-and-coming Frisco, Texas. Tammy is a country club, PTA woman with her own Christmas decorating service, and she’s manic, whacked-out, Christ-centered, and looks for a lot in her “elf”, Hank Stuever. Caroll is just as Christ-centered, but she’s a single mom who’s had a lot of hard knocks along Life’s path. There’s Jeff and Bridgett Trykoski, who are THOSE people—the ones who have the Christmas light-festooned house and yard, all synchronized to blaring music, all of which you can probably see from outer space. You know, the house that attracts traffic jams and discord among neighbors. And Ray Porter does them all to a T.
Part of Tinsel could seem like Stuever is making fun of them, there are indeed twangs galore, sappy sayings, people raising hands in mega-churches, and all of them voted Bush/Cheney… TWICE. They love Christ; they hate immigration, even as there are Mexicans and Guatemalans decorating their malls and laying down tile in their 6,000 square foot homes. But Stuever really gets into it all. He’s a Blue state gay guy, part of the liberal media, but he’s embraced by all these families and allowed into their lives to share in the highs, the lows, the frustrations, and the tiny joys.
And there are lots of tiny joys. I mean TINY. For people who work themselves up into fevered pitches, one would expect lots more. But all they really want is to be happy. Thinking that having magazine-quality Christmases will bring them The Total Moment with their families. Alas, their kids aren’t into The Total Moment. They’d rather have laptops and dirt bikes; they’d rather go skiing just as their friends’ families are doing.
I listen to Tinsel every year. I can’t really say why; it’s not that there’s any depth to it, any rousing and warm epiphanies discovered along the way. It’s just one wry white guy writing about shallow yet earnest people and commercialism run amok.
But they’ve got good hearts! Even though I totally canNOT relate to their problems, though they do have the run-of-the-mill broken bones, cancers, kids with ADD, I just can’t seem to understand how hiring a woman dressed as an elf to tell my kids we’re going on a skiing trip is supposed to keep the magic of Christmas alive. Ya know? And really, they just want to believe. As in B-E-L-I-E-V-E!!! Everybody raise your hands up to JAY-sus!
It’s a funny book, and like I said, Ray Porter’s narration brings so much humor to some really clever writing. I was walking along the street last night, listening to it, looking at houses decorated with Christmas lights and inflatable Minions, and it simply resonated with me.
Tinsel is about our need to shop, our need to find spirit, but only if it comes from the mall and there’s a receipt for returns that comes with it. It’s about friendship, trying to do the right thing, and trying to have fun and stay young. It’s about all things being fake, and fake is okay in Frisco.
And finally, it’s about what a Recession will do to Christmas hopes and dreams, what it’ll do to a way of life (it’s almost like cruising through “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” and watching the exotic in their natural habitat even as said habitat is destroyed by loggers).
But like I said: If you’re looking for grand epiphanies, warm and cuddly kisses, Tinsel is not the book for you. If, however, you wanna get a peek at a completely foreign way of life, written by a man who doesn’t take anything, ANYTHING, seriously? Give it a try. I heartily recommend the chuckles and the wry smiles.
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