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 Mother's 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.
Valentine's Day, Christmas, Easter, and Mother's 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 Mother's 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)
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.
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