San Antonio College Library

"Between the close of the Civil War and the end of World War I, Americans invented more than twenty-five holidays. Investigating a wide array of secular holidays, Ellen M. Litwicki argues that their invention and celebration provided various American groups with the opportunity to recast the story of the United States with themselves in the pivotal roles. She shows how competing commemorations reflected both the diversity of the nation's populace...

"Jack Santino's analysis encompasses everything from movies to romance novels, from television shows to comic books. One especially fascinating feature of this study is its examination of the packaged-foods industry and the manner in which soft drinks, beer, snack cakes, cookies, candy, and breakfast cereals are regularly repackaged to reflect particular holidays. In what becomes a central theme of the book, Santino shows how holidays give companies...

Guide to more than 3,000 holidays, celebrations, feasts, and festivals held in over 150 countries around the world, arranged alphabetically by name with multiple indexes including ethnic and geographical, religion, and chronological.

How did Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday become a national holiday? Why do we exchange presents on Christmas and Chanukah? What do bunnies have to do with Easter? How did Earth Day become a global holiday? These questions and more are answered in this fascinating exploration into the history and meaning of holidays and rituals. Edited by Amitai Etzioni, one of the most influential social and political thinkers of our time, this collection provides...

"Provides information about the history and celebration of American patriotic holidays and days of observance. Features include narrative overviews, primary source documents, chronology, and print and web sources for further study"--Provided by publisher.

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...