The Commercialization of the Holiday Season in Quebec, 1885-1915

Download or read book The Commercialization of the Holiday Season in Quebec, 1885-1915 written by Jean-Philippe Warren and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08-25 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people believe that consumer Christmas is a recent creation. However, it was more than a century ago that the consumer spirit of Christmas blossomed. Few societies illustrate this spectacular development better than French Canada. Here, the new spirit of Christmas that came to prevail imposed itself through two battles. On the one hand, New Year’s Day, which had been the true focal point of the winter season in French Canadians’ culture, was supplanted by the Nativity. On the other hand, Baby Jesus was replaced by Santa Claus. In seeking to understand how Christian celebrations became at the turn of the twentieth century the commercial event par excellence for French Canadians, this book invites the reader to question the genesis of seemingly immemorial traditions.