Consumer Rites: The Buying & Selling of American HolidaysPrinceton University Press, 1995 - 363 sayfa Slogans such as "Let's put Christ back into Christmas" or "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" hold an appeal to Christians who oppose the commercializing of events they hold sacred. However, through a close look at the rise of holidays in the United States, Leigh Schmidt show us that commercial appropriations of these occasions were as religious in form as they were secular. The rituals of America's holiday bazaar that emerged in the nineteenth century offered a luxuriant merger of the holy and the profane--a heady blend of fashion and faith, merchandising and gift-giving, profits and sentiments, all celebrations of a devout consumption. In this richly illustrated book, which captures both the blessings and ballyhoo of American holiday observances for 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. |
İçindekiler
List of Illustrations | xi |
Introduction | 3 |
Time Is Money | 17 |
The Peddling of Festivity | 19 |
From Sabbatarian Discipline to Romantic Longing | 23 |
National Holidays and the Consumer Culture | 32 |
St Valentines Day Greeting | 38 |
St Valentines Pilgrimage from Christian Martyr to Patron of Love | 40 |
Enchantment and Disenchantment in the Modern Celebration | 169 |
The Piety of Protest | 175 |
Easter Parade | 192 |
The Art of Church Decoration and the Art of Window Display | 194 |
Piety Fashion and a Spring Promenade | 210 |
Easter Knickknacks and Novelties | 219 |
Protest Subversion and Disquiet | 234 |
Mothers Day Bouquet | 244 |
Of Puzzle Purses Chapbooks and the Valentine Vogue | 47 |
The Marketing of Valentines 18401860 | 63 |
A Private Charivari | 77 |
A Meaner Sort of Merchandize or A Pleasure without Alloy? The New Fashion Contested and Celebrated | 85 |
From Confectioners Hearts to Hallmark Cards | 94 |
Christmas Bazaar | 105 |
Revels Gifts Resolutions and Watch Night | 108 |
The Birth of the Christmas Market 18201900 | 122 |
Women and the Victorian Christmas | 148 |
Wanamakers and the Consecration of the Marketplace | 159 |
Sources of a New Celebration | 246 |
The Marketing of Mothers Day | 256 |
Negotiating the Bounds of Church Home and Marketplace | 267 |
The Humbug of Modern Ritual | 275 |
April Fools? Trade Trickery and Modern Celebration | 293 |
Acknowledgments | 305 |
Notes | 311 |
359 | |