Many happenings are to come with the Winter Solstice and the ever-so-popular late December holidays.This week is full of celebration as the holidays of  Las Posadas, Chanukah, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Kwanzaa are finally here. Family and friends come together during this precious time of year in December to rejoice and be thankful for their fortunes. Some of the many things that are monumental during this time are religion, snow, pine trees, Santa Claus, reindeer, candles, lights, music, presents, and an overall feeling of togetherness. Here are some related reads to immerse you in the holiday spirit.

Social Policy and Religion

Editors: Peter Herrmann and Sibel Kalaycioglu (University College of Cork, School of Applied Social Studies, Cork, Ireland, and others)
Today’s society is marked by a fundamental ambiguity: On the one hand, we find the loss in old values and systems, in particular what is called secularization, and the loss of the stronghold of religious institutions. However, at the same time, we find the opposite: rather than the loss of confidence in religion, the loss of confidence in citizenship and the institutions of the welfare state. As a conservative answer, policies based on family and religion are constructed and offered as new doctrines as well as for new social policies. The borders between different traditional positions are blurred in this process: conservative and progressive positions claim the turn to communitarian values. This book is a valuable contribution to current debates, looking at the background of faith systems, their understanding and claims, and the limitations in answering the challenges of modernizing societies.

Latin America: Economic, Social and Political Issues of the 21st Century

Editor: ​Cory Peterson
This book reviews economic, social and political issues of Latin America in the 21st century. Chapter One begins with a discussion of the latest breakthroughs in the literature on institutionalization and consolidation of the party system in countries of this region. Chapter Two proposes an index intended to measure the formal political strengths of South American parliaments. Chapter Three discusses regional migration in Latin America, focusing on the social and cultural aspects of a series of topics related to intraregional migration. Chapter Four summarizes the results from two recent studies which empirically investigate how Cuban citizens represent the concept of happiness and its semantic space. Chapter Five reviews the literature which describes the two most recent cholera epidemics in the western hemisphere. Chapter Six uses findings from a survey of attitudes and beliefs of nurses practicing in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, recent scholarly publications, and public health data, to provide a description and an analysis of the factors that are known to influence HIV care and prevention in Mexico.

The Emotions Industry

Editor: Mira Moshe, Ph.D. (Ariel University, Israel)
This book deals with the multi-cultural phenomenon of the emotions industry, as well as the cynical manner in which that industry exploits its consumers in various cultures. The book was written in order to illuminate the fact that the culture industry has developed a “new” configuration dominated by the production and distribution of emotions – the emotions industry. The emotions industry is an industry that provides an incentive to exaggerate emotions in order to accumulate social, cultural or economic wealth. It endeavors to create emotional needs by connecting between the realization of these needs and consumer culture; by blurring the boundaries between authentic and simulated emotions, between real and imagined authenticity; by encouraging the externalization of inner worlds for financial gain, generating income or any other result; by revealing emotional worlds that gradually become merchandise, an effective and productive means of promoting economic, political, social or cultural processes. Obviously this is only possible on the condition that we are capable of controlling emotional processes, responding or delaying reactions, opening up and including or closing up and excluding our surroundings. This ability to regulate emotions lies at the foundation of the emotions industry, which shapes the interaction between emotion, cognition and behavior, commercial-economic and private interests, social-cultural and spiritual needs. Thus emotional regulation is transformed into a production line of emotional expectations and reactions, which specializes in creating emotional products and marketing them to the public in the framework of mass consumer culture. See website for more.

The Psychology of Santa

Author:  Carole S. Slotterback (Dept. of Psychology, Univ. of Scranton, Scranton, PA)
The 'Psychology of Santa' examines decades of psychological research, as well as studies in sociology, communication, history, and advertising, all of which deal with Christmas. The book examines what research can reveal to us about how psychologists and others view these customs and what they represent to our culture. A number of aspects of Christmas are explored, and this book offers an intriguing interpretation of our lives and customs. Topics covered include how Christmas is celebrated during wars, a history of selected customs and whether families today still engage in them, how different traditions of psychologists view Christmas, Christmas and stress, Christmas and depression and suicide, children’s letters to Santa Claus, and children's beliefs in Santa and how they change with age.

Deer: Habitat, Behavior and Conservation

Editors: A.A. Cahler and J.P. Marsten
This book presents topical research in the study of the habitat, behavior and conservation of deer. Topics discussed include the influence of anthropogenic disturbances on activity, behavior and heart rate of roe deer; deer as biomonitors of radioactive contamination; hunted red deer management; genetic distinctness of two endemic subspecies of deer in Korea and the effects of sika deer on vegetation in Japan.

African Civilization in the 21st Century

Editor: Tseggai Isaac (Missouri University of Science and Technology, MO, USA) and Andrew Targowski (Western Michigan University, MI, USA)
This book took the task of conceptualizing the change of African Civilization in the 21st century. It examines African Civilization and its encounters in view of the last 500 years of European and American slavery, exploitation and diplomatic paralysis. In post-colonial Africa (1960-2014), foreign powers have more influence on Africa. However, Africa cannot claim to have the diplomatic prestige to influence European, American or Asian powers. The overwhelming challenges that Africa has been experiencing did attract global reaction ranging from military intervention, diplomatic push or pull (rarely in between), and frequent humanitarian involvements. It is still inconclusive if global attention on Africa has had impact as much as it has been a stomping ground for advisors, donors, politicians, international agencies and a phalanx of well-meaning NGOs. However, their impact can be exemplified by the fact that in Sub-Saharan Africa, every second individual still does not have access to fresh water and electricity in the 21st century.See the website for full description

Theory of Evolution in Snow Cover Science-Atlas Monograph

Author: Erland G. Kolomyts (Institute of Ecology of the Volga River Basin, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia) 
The Atlas-monograph presents a novel approach to the study of the development of snow cover based on its crystal morphology and the fundamental laws of natural symmetry. The book is intended for glaciologists and snow scientists employed in the study of the structure of snow cover and in avalanche forecasting as well as for specialists in the field of mineralogical crystallography and crystal growth. See the website for a full description.