A Review Of "The $100 Christmas" By Bill McKibben
             In the article "The $100 Christmas," by Bill McKibben, he displays traditional and non-traditional views of Christmas. He starts the article with the giving the ideas of his family's traditional ways. The family gathers on Christmas Eve to venture into the woods in search of Christmas tree. Once they find a promising tree, they cut it down, take it home and decorate it. Then, off to church they go, to help with the annual pageant. Finally, they head back home to hang the stockings, stoke the fire and head off to bed.
             McKibben next turns toward the non-traditional display. Starting off with the "except[ion] that there's no sprawling pile of presents under the tree" (305). The reason for this lack of presents, is his church is promoting the idea for people to spend $100 dollars on their family. In this article he proposes this idea for other organizations to promote the same idea.
             He gives his explanation to what it has done for his family and why he does it. He believes his daughter enjoys the rituals of their modest, yet radical Christmas. He also she is without a television, which may be part of the reason she is so understanding. He gives a figure for a business during the holiday, that they bring in a third of their volume during the holiday season.
             When he first started campaigning the idea, came the opposition of the radical point of view. Newspaper columnists gave their opinion to the idea saying, "...church people should stick to religion and leave the economy alone" (306). McKibben looks from the opposing side also. He points out if everyone decided to go along with the idea, then gift shops, caterers, florists, liquor wholesalers would all suffer during the cut down holiday season. This is the most he says for the opposition though. So it seems he considers it, but doesn't really think about i
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