Title
Celebrating the Family : Ethnicity, Consumer Culture, and Family Rituals / Elizabeth H. Pleck.
ISBN
9780674276888
Published
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2022]
Copyright
©2000
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (338 p.)
Item Number
10.4159/9780674276888 doi
Summary
Nostalgia for the imagined warm family gatherings of yesteryear has colored our understanding of family celebrations. Elizabeth Pleck examines family traditions over two centuries and finds a complicated process of change in the way Americans have celebrated holidays such as Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Chinese New Year, and Passover as well as the life cycle rituals of birth, coming of age, marriage, and death. By the early nineteenth century carnivalesque celebrations outside the home were becoming sentimental occasions that used consumer culture and displays of status and wealth to celebrate the idea of home and family. The 1960s saw the full emergence of a postsentimental approach to holiday celebration, which takes place outside as often as inside the home, and recognizes changes in the family and women's roles, as well as the growth of ethnic group consciousness. This multicultural, comparative history of American family celebration, rich in detail and spiced with telling anecdotes and illustrations and a keen sense of irony, offers insight into the significance of ethnicity and consumer culture in shaping what people regard as the most memorable moments of family life.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Jun 2022)
Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER ONE Festivals, Rites, and Presents
CHAPTER TWO Family, Feast, and Football
CHAPTER THREE Holiday Blues and Pfeffernusse
CHAPTER FOUR Easter Breads and Bunnies
CHAPTER FIVE Festival of Freedom
CHAPTER SIX Eating and Explosives
CHAPTER SEVEN Cakes and Candles
CHAPTER EIGHT Rites of Passage
CHAPTER NINE Please Omit Flowers
CHAPTER TEN The Bride Once Wore Black
CHAPTER ELEVEN Rituals, Families, and Identities
Notes
Index
