Consumer rites : the buying & selling of American holidays / Leigh Eric Schmidt.

Author
Schmidt, Leigh Eric [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©1995.
Description
xvi, 363 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Availability

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Firestone Library - Stacks GT4986.A1 S35 1995 Browse related items Request
    Firestone Library - Stacks GT4986.A1 S35 1995 Browse related items Request

      Details

      Subject(s)
      Summary note
      • Reexamining the story of holidays in the United States, Leigh Schmidt shows that commercial appropriations of these occasions were actually as religious in form as they were secular. The new rituals of America's holiday bazaar offered a luxuriant merger of the holy and the profane - a heady blend of fashion and faith, merchandising and gift giving, profits and sentiments. In this richly illustrated book that captures both the blessings and ballyhoo of American holiday observances from the mid-eighteenth century through the twentieth, the author offers a reassessment of the "consumer rites" that various social critics have long decried for their spiritual emptiness and banal sentimentality.
      • Schmidt uses everything from diaries to manuals on church decoration and window display to show in bright detail the ways people have prepared for and celebrated specific holidays - such as going Christmas shopping, making love tokens, choosing Easter bonnets, sending flowers to Mom, or buying ties for Dad. He demonstrates, in particular, how women took the lead as holiday consumers, shaping warm-hearted celebrations of home and family through their intricate engagement with the marketplace. Bringing together the history of business, religion, and gender, this book offers a fascinating cultural history of an endlessly debated marvel - the commercialization of American holidays.
      Bibliographic references
      Includes bibliographical references and index.
      Contents
      • Time is money. Church festivals and commercial fairs : the peddling of festivity
      • "Enterprise holds carnival while poetry keeps Lent" : from Sabbatarian discipline to romantic longing
      • A commercial revolution : national holidays and the consumer culture
      • St. Valentine's day greeting. St. Valentine's pilgrimage from Christian martyr to patron of love
      • The handmade and the ready-made : of puzzle purses, chapbooks, and the valentine vogue
      • Remaking the holiday's rituals : the marketing of valentines, 1840-1860
      • Mock valentines : a private charivari
      • "A meaner sort of merchandize" or, "A pleasure without alloy"? : the new fashion contested and celebrated
      • Expanding holiday trade : from confectioners' hearts to Hallmark cards
      • Christmas bazaar. The rites of the New Year : revels, gifts, resolutions, and watch nights
      • The birth of the Christmas market, 1820-1900
      • Shopping towards Bethlehem : women and the Victorian Christmas
      • Christmas cathedrals : Wanamaker's and the consecration of the marketplace
      • Magi, miracles, and Macy's : enchantment and disenchantment in the modern celebration
      • Putting Christ in Christmas and keeping him there : the piety of protest.
      • Easter parade. "In the beauty of the lilies" : the art of church decoration and the art of window display
      • Piety, fashion, and a spring promenade
      • "A bewildering array of plastic forms" : Easter knickknacks and novelties
      • Raining on the Easter parade : protest, subversion, and disquiet
      • Mother's Day bouquet. Anna Jarvis and the churches : sources of a new celebration
      • Commercial floriculture and the moral economy of flowers : the marketing of Mother's Day
      • Pirates, profiteers and trespassers : negotiating the bounds of church, home, and marketplace
      • The invention of Father's Day : the humbug of modern ritual
      • Epilogue : April Fools? : trade, trickery, and modern celebration.
      ISBN
      • 0691029806 ((cloth ; : alk. paper))
      • 9780691029801 ((cloth ; : alk. paper))
      • 9780691017211
      • 0691017212
      LCCN
      95010604
      OCLC
      32272045
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