Consumer Rites: The Buying & Selling of American Holidays - Couverture rigide

Schmidt, Leigh Eric

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0691029806 ISBN 13 : 9780691029801

Editeur : Princeton University Press, 1995

Synopsis

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, this book argues 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 19th century offered a luxuriant merger of the holy and the profane - a heady blend of fashion and faith, merchandizing and gift-giving, profits and sentiments, all celebrations of a devout consumption. This book offers a reassessment of the "consumer rites" that various social critics have long decried for their spiritual emptiness and banal sentimentality. It tells the story of how holiday celebrations were almost banished by Puritans and other religious reformers in the colonies but went on to be romanticized and reinvented in the 19th and 20th centuries. Merchants and advertisers were crucial for the reimagining of the holidays, promoting them in a grand, carnivalesque manner, which could include gargantuan fruit cakes, towering rabbits, masked Santa Clauses, and exploding valentines. Along the way Schmidt uses everything from diaries to manuals on church decoration and window display to show 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, 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.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Leigh Eric Schmidt is an Associate Professor of History at Princeton University. He is the author of Holy Fairs: Scottish Communions and American Revivals in the Early Modern Period (Princeton).

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Princeton University Press
• Date d'édition: 1995
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0691029806
• ISBN 13: 9780691029801
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 296
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible