Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays
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"The real merit of this book lies in its complex sympathies: it is at once a major contribution to American religious history and to cultural history."--David D. Hall, Harvard University Publishers Weekly In this scholarly account, Schmidt (Holy Fairs) traces how the union of commerce and religion in the celebration of U.S. holidays was established. Early Protestant reformers frowned on festive observances, and it was not until the mid-1800s that holidays became associated with feasting and gift-giving by the new culture of merchandising. Advertisers transformed the medieval celebration of St. Valentine's Day into a modern explosion of cards and candy. Commercialization of Christmas, New Year's Day and Easter soon followed. Schmidt limits his carefully researched study to Christian holidays and acknowledges that he is sympathetic to the mix of the sacred and the secular. Taking issue with critics who assail holidays as devoid of meaning, Schmidt argues that commercialization includes deeply felt religious elements and that modern celebrations were ritualized by women who welcomed an area of power in domestic life. Photos not seen by PW. (Nov.)
List of IllustrationsIntroduction3Ch. 1Time Is Money17Church Festivals and Commercial Fairs: The Peddling of Festivity19"Enterprise Holds Carnival, While Poetry Keeps Lent": From Sabbatarian Discipline to Romantic Longing23A Commercial Revolution: National Holidays and the Consumer Culture32Ch. 2St. Valentine's Day Greeting38St. Valentine's Pilgrimage from Christian Martyr to Patron of Love40The Handmade and the Ready-Made: Of Puzzle Purses, Chapbooks, and the Valentine Vogue47Remaking the Holiday's Rituals: The Marketing of Valentines, 1840-186063Mock Valentines: A Private Charivari77"A Meaner Sort of Merchandize" or "A Pleasure without Alloy"? The New Fashion Contested and Celebrated85Expanding Holiday Trade: From Confectioners' Hearts to Hallmark Cards94Ch. 3Christmas Bazaar105The Rites of the New Year: Revels, Gifts, Resolutions, and Watch Nights108The Birth of the Christmas Market, 1820-1900122Shopping towards Bethlehem: Women and the Victorian Christmas148Christmas Cathedrals: Wanamaker's and the Consecration of the Marketplace159Magi, Miracles, and Macy's: Enchantment and Disenchantment in the Modern Celebration169Putting Christ in Christmas and Keeping Him There: The Piety of Protest175Ch. 4Easter Parade192"In the Beauty of the Lilies": The Art of Church Decoration and the Art of Window Display194Piety, Fashion, and a Spring Promenade210"A Bewildering Array of Plastic Forms": Easter Knickknacks and Novelties219Raining on the Easter Parade: Protest, Subversion, and Disquiet234Ch. 5Mother's Day Bouquet244Anna Jarvis and the Churches: Sources of a New Celebration246Commercial Floriculture and the Moral Economy of Flowers: The Marketing of Mother's Day256Pirates, Profiteers and Trespassers: Negotiating the Bounds of Church, Home, and Marketplace267The Invention of Father's Day: The Humbug of Modern Ritual275Epilogue: April Fools? Trade, Trickery, and Modern Celebration293Acknowledgments305Notes311Index359
