A journey into the excess and beauty of Christmas in the suburbs, from a writer who is "wildly funny, caustic, and subversive" (Augusten Burroughs)

Hank Stuever,a reporter for the Style Section of The Washington Post , and a frequent television and radio commentator on popular culture, is a feature writer with an incredible eye for the idiosyncrasies of American life. In Tinsel , Stuever turns that eye on Frisco, Texas, a town that is at once all-American and completely itself, to give us a portrait of the most over-the-top celebration in our nation.

When Stuever's narrative begins, he's standing in line with the people waiting to purchase flat-screen TVs at Best Buy on Black Friday, the opening of the Christmas shopping season. From there he follows a number of key Frisco residents as they navigate through the nativity and all its attendant crises: Tammie Parnell, an eternally optimistic suburban mom and proprietor of "Two Elves with a Twist", a company that decorates people's houses for Christmas, Jeff and Bridgette Trykoski, owners of that one house every town has--the house, visible from space,with the brightest and most awe-inspiring Christmas decorations; and single mother and MBNA (now Bank of America) employee Carol Cavazos, who hopes that the life-affirming moments of Christmas might overcome the struggles of the rest of the year. Stuever's portraits of Tammie, Jeff, and Bridgette, and the whole community, are at once humane, heartfelt, revealing--and very, very funny.