Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays by Leigh Eric Schmid

Description: Consumer Rites by Leigh Eric Schmidt Offers a reassessment of the consumer rites that social critics have decried. This book discusses how holiday celebrations were almost banished by Puritans and religious reformers but went on to be romanticized and reinvented in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It offers a cultural history of the commercialization of American holidays. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Slogans such as "Lets 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 Americas 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.Schmidt 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 nineteenth and twentieth 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, masked Santa Clauses, and exploding valentines. Along the way Schmidt uses everything from diaries to manuals on church decoration and window display to show in bright detail the ways in which 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. Bringing together the history of business, religion, and gender, this book offers a fascinating cultural history of an endlessly debated marvel--the commercialization of the American holidays. Notes 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 Back Cover "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 Author Biography 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). Table of Contents 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. Valentines Day Greeting38St. Valentines Pilgrimage from Christian Martyr to Patron of Love40The Handmade and the Ready-Made: Of Puzzle Purses, Chapbooks, and the Valentine Vogue47Remaking the Holidays 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: Wanamakers and the Consecration of the Marketplace159Magi, Miracles, and Macys: 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. 5Mothers Day Bouquet244Anna Jarvis and the Churches: Sources of a New Celebration246Commercial Floriculture and the Moral Economy of Flowers: The Marketing of Mothers Day256Pirates, Profiteers and Trespassers: Negotiating the Bounds of Church, Home, and Marketplace267The Invention of Fathers Day: The Humbug of Modern Ritual275Epilogue: April Fools? Trade, Trickery, and Modern Celebration293Acknowledgments305Notes311Index359 Review Honorable Mention for the 1996 Ray and Pat Browne Award for Best Book in Popular Culture "Conceptually sophisticated, wide ranging; [Schmidt] treats Valentines Day, Easter, and Mothers 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 drivers 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 theyve 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."--Washington Post Book World "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, Mothers Day or Fathers Day! Its the American thing to do."--Cross Currents Promotional 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 Kirkus US Review Schmidt (Religion/Drew Univ.; Holy Fairs, not reviewed) traces the cultural and commercial history of American holidays with some surprising results. Christmas gift-giving pumps some $37 billion into the American economy every year, a figure greater than the gross national product of Ireland. About 150 million Mothers Day cards are sent annually. In short, holidays are big business in America, and many people are not too pleased about it. Schmidt focuses his attention primarily on showing how the commercial grinch crept into the picture in American celebrations of St. Valentines Day, Christmas, Easter, and Mothers Day. However, he argues that the apparent taint of commerce is, in reality, as much in keeping with the "festal excess" at the heart of the notion of festivity as any religious recognition of these days, and can be traced in many cases back to the medieval period, when fairs and markets were common on feast days. He shows convincingly that the battle over the holidays in America is rooted not in recent commercialism, but in the fundamental difference between the somber Puritan and more indulgent Anglican/Catholic visions of religion. His argument founders, however, when he asserts that the excesses of American capitalism are in some way tied into the "carnivalesque" - the term used by Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin to connote bawdy, insurrectionary humor - mistaking mercantile vulgarity for Rabelaisian subversion. In general, his defense of holiday commercialism is not entirely convincing, but he offers a fascinating picture of key changes in American celebration, from a bewildering variety of antebellum Santas to quick biographies of Joyce Hall, father of Hallmark Greeting Cards, and Anna Jarvis, the creator of Mothers Day. Although the central argument of the book remains unproven, this is an enlightening and entertaining look at a relatively undiscussed aspect of American culture, particularly interesting for its insights into 19th-century mores. (Kirkus Reviews) Prizes Commended for Ray and Pat Browne Award for Best Book in Popular Culture 1996 (United States) Long Description Slogans such as "Lets 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 Americas 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.Schmidt 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 nineteenth and twentieth 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, masked Santa Clauses, and exploding valentines. Along the way Schmidt uses everything from diaries to manuals on church decoration and window display to show in bright detail the ways in which 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. Bringing together the history of business, religion, and gender, this book offers a fascinating cultural history of an endlessly debated marvel--the commercialization of the American holidays. Review Quote 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 theyve 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. -- Washington Post Book World Details ISBN0691017212 Author Leigh Eric Schmidt Publisher Princeton University Press Language English ISBN-10 0691017212 ISBN-13 9780691017211 Media Book Format Paperback Year 1997 Imprint Princeton University Press Subtitle The Buying and Selling of American Holidays Place of Publication New Jersey Country of Publication United States Residence US Affiliation Princeton University Short Title CONSUMER RITES REV/E Pages 384 Edition Description Revised Illustrations 101 halftones Translated from English DOI 10.1604/9780691017211 UK Release Date 1997-11-16 NZ Release Date 1997-11-16 US Release Date 1997-11-16 Publication Date 1997-11-16 Alternative 9780691029801 DEWEY 394.260973 Audience Professional & Vocational AU Release Date 1998-01-26 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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