shopping cart
Call us:  800-878-7323 HELP
McAfee SECURE helps keep you safe from identity theft, credit card fraud, spyware, spam, viruses and online scams.
Interviews | June 19, 2009

Dave: IMG Jim Lynch Makes Landscape Art... Out of Text



jimlynchIf Carl Hiaasen set one of his novels on a residential stretch of boundary line between British Columbia and Washington, or if Richard Russo's characters had relatives in the Pacific Northwest, the result might be something like Jim Lynch's Border Songs. Continue »
  1. $18.16 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

    Border Songs

    Jim Lynch

$24.50
List price: $38.95
TRADE PAPER, USED
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
available for shipping or prepaid pickup only
Available for In-store Pickup
in 7 to 12 days
Qty Store Section
25 Partner Warehouse General- General


More copies of this ISBN:

Consumer Rites : the Buying and Selling of American Holidays (95 Edition)

by Leigh Eric Schmidt

Consumer Rites : the Buying and Selling of American Holidays (95 Edition) Cover
  1. This particular item is stocked in a Partner Warehouse and will ship separately from other items in your shopping cart.

Synopses & Reviews

Please note that used books may not include additional media (study guides, CDs, DVDs, solutions manuals, etc.) as described in the publisher comments.

Publisher Comments:

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.

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:

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.

Review:

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.

Review:

Filled with interesting facts and nascent ideas.

Review:

[A] richly documented, smoothly narrated, and lavishly illustrated [study] by a cultural historian who knows his stuff and tells it with panache. 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.

Review:

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. . . . is without question a true holiday gift, and it makes for fascinating reading.

Review:

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.

Synopsis:

Reexamining the story of holidays in the United States, Leigh Schmidt shows that commercial appropriations of these occasions were actually as religious in form as they were secular. The new rituals of America's holiday bazaar offered a luxuriant merger of the holy and the profane - a heady blend of fashion and faith, merchandising and gift giving, profits and sentiments. In this richly illustrated book that captures both the blessings and ballyhoo of American holiday observances from 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 uses everything from diaries to manuals on church decoration and window display to show in bright detail 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, or 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 American holidays.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Introduction3
Ch. 1Time Is Money17
Church Festivals and Commercial Fairs: The Peddling of Festivity19
"Enterprise Holds Carnival, While Poetry Keeps Lent": From Sabbatarian Discipline to Romantic Longing23
A Commercial Revolution: National Holidays and the Consumer Culture32
Ch. 2St. Valentine's Day Greeting38
St. Valentine's Pilgrimage from Christian Martyr to Patron of Love40
The Handmade and the Ready-Made: Of Puzzle Purses, Chapbooks, and the Valentine Vogue47
Remaking the Holiday's Rituals: The Marketing of Valentines, 1840-186063
Mock Valentines: A Private Charivari77
"A Meaner Sort of Merchandize" or "A Pleasure without Alloy"? The New Fashion Contested and Celebrated85
Expanding Holiday Trade: From Confectioners' Hearts to Hallmark Cards94
Ch. 3Christmas Bazaar105
The Rites of the New Year: Revels, Gifts, Resolutions, and Watch Nights108
The Birth of the Christmas Market, 1820-1900122
Shopping towards Bethlehem: Women and the Victorian Christmas148
Christmas Cathedrals: Wanamaker's and the Consecration of the Marketplace159
Magi, Miracles, and Macy's: Enchantment and Disenchantment in the Modern Celebration169
Putting Christ in Christmas and Keeping Him There: The Piety of Protest175
Ch. 4Easter Parade192
"In the Beauty of the Lilies": The Art of Church Decoration and the Art of Window Display194
Piety, Fashion, and a Spring Promenade210
"A Bewildering Array of Plastic Forms": Easter Knickknacks and Novelties219
Raining on the Easter Parade: Protest, Subversion, and Disquiet234
Ch. 5Mother's Day Bouquet244
Anna Jarvis and the Churches: Sources of a New Celebration246
Commercial Floriculture and the Moral Economy of Flowers: The Marketing of Mother's Day256
Pirates, Profiteers and Trespassers: Negotiating the Bounds of Church, Home, and Marketplace267
The Invention of Father's Day: The Humbug of Modern Ritual275
Epilogue: April Fools? Trade, Trickery, and Modern Celebration293
Acknowledgments305
Notes311
Index359

Product Details

ISBN:
9780691017211
Subtitle:
The Buying and Selling of American Holidays
Author:
Schmidt, Leigh Eric
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
Location:
Princeton
Subject:
Social life and customs
Subject:
United states
Subject:
United States - General
Subject:
Anthropology - Cultural
Subject:
Customs & Traditions
Subject:
Moral conditions
Subject:
Holidays
Subject:
Sociology
Subject:
American history
Subject:
Religion
Subject:
Economics
Subject:
United States Religious life and customs.
Subject:
United States Economic conditions.
Copyright:
Edition Description:
Trade paper
Publication Date:
October 1997
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
College/higher education:
Language:
English
Illustrations:
101 halftones
Pages:
379
Dimensions:
9 x 6 in 19 oz

Other books you might like

  1. $7.25 Used Trade Paper add to wish list
  2. $11.95 Used Trade Paper add to wish list
  3. $14.95 Used Trade Paper add to wish list
  4. $45.50 New Trade Paper add to wish list
  5. $3.00 Used Trade Paper add to wish list
  6. $102.25 New Hardcover add to wish list

Related Aisles

  • back to top

Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.