A former Austin American-Statesman writer has a new book out about Christmas.
Hank Steuver travelled to North Texas for his take on the holiday. The setting: one of the highest concentrations of retail square-footage in the country, Frisco, Texas.
"I was looking for a place that is a brand new suburb," Steuver said. "Frisco is, if you know Dallas, north of Plano, it used to population 6,000, it was a farming town. And now it's population 100,000."
Steuver said it has 7 million square-feet of chain retail space.
"If you're going to tell the story of Christmas in America, you need an economic backdrop, because Christmas is the lynch pin of the American economy," he said.
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'Tinsel'
News 8's Veronica Castelo sat down with the author to talk about the book "Tinsel."
 
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To Steuver, Frisco fit the bill.
"It had lots of young families, lots of churches, if you're going to do a story about Christmas, you want to find a lot of baby Jesus," he said. "And, everybody had just moved there, they were like blinking awake in this brand new world."
Steuver said it was very alluring, so he moved to the area and followed a few families through the holidays.
"They were all interesting to me, they all had a story to tell about their beliefs in Christmas," he said. "I think we need to figure out a way to manage the huge mythology of Christmas and the sort of psychological number that it can work on us."
Steuver said he wanted to tell a real Christmas story, one that sheds light on the stress, the money and the individual during America's biggest holiday season.
