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Home > History and Archaeology > History > History: specific events and topics > Social and cultural history > Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays
Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays

Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays


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About the Book

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.



About the Author :
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).

Review :
"Honorable Mention for the 1996 Ray and Pat Browne Award for Best Book in Popular Culture" "Conceptually sophisticated, wide ranging; [Schmidt] treats Valentine's Day, Easter, and Mother's Day as well as Christmas all within a delicately balanced framework of tensions between market rationality and romantic sentiment. . . . [A] fresh and timely alternative to contemporary academic fashion."---Jackson Lears, The New Republic "Filled with interesting facts and nascent ideas."---Fred Miller Robinson, The New York Times Book Review "[A] richly documented, smoothly narrated, and lavishly illustrated [study] by a cultural historian who knows his stuff and tells it with panache. Consumer Rites is good history and good reading. . . . A brilliant chronicle of the American tale where domesticated remnants of Protestant religion, not nationalist identity alone, drove developments, and where capitalist expansion was in the driver's seat."---Lawrence A. Hoffman, Cross Currents "Its that time of year again: holiday shopping, and lots of it. Ever wonder how this American tradition got started? In this enlightening book, Leigh Eric Schmidt looks at holidays in our country and how they've evolved over the past 150 years into highly commercialized events. . . . Consumer Rites is without question a true holiday gift, and it makes for fascinating reading." "Consumer Rites is good history and good reading. . . . a terrific story terrifically told. . . . richly documented, smoothly narrated, and lavishly illustrated by a cultural historian who knows his stuff and tells it with panache. . . . Give it as a gift next Christmas, Mother's Day or Father's Day! It's the American thing to do."


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Product Details
  • ISBN-13: 9780691029801
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press
  • Publisher Imprint: Princeton University Press
  • Height: 254 mm
  • No of Pages: 296
  • Sub Title: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays
  • Width: 197 mm
  • ISBN-10: 0691029806
  • Publisher Date: 21 Sep 1995
  • Binding: Hardback
  • Language: English
  • Returnable: Y
  • Weight: 482 gr


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