The Modern Christmas in America.

William B. Waits' study of Christmas is subtitled "A Cultural History of Gift Giving," and his approach and focus are true to this emphasis. Using "insights and sensitivities gleaned from anthropology (5)," especially the work of Marcel Mauss, Waits examines Christmas gift giving as an indicator of social roles and relationships. His main sources of evidence are articles on Christmas and gift-giving in popular magazines, advertisements for Christmas gifts, and reports on Christmas retailing in business trade journals published between 1880 and the present. Waits uses his sources to great effect, illuminating topics ranging from the social and economic dynamics of the Christmas bonus to the origins of Christmas Club savings accounts. In the process, the author demonstrates how Christmas gift giving both shaped and reflected American cultural and economic life.

The Modern Christmas in America documents significant changes in the type and meaning of the Christmas gifts Americans exchanged over the last hundred years. During the late 19th century, Americans gave each other handmade gifts, each selected especially for a specific person. Thus gift givers made a strong statement about their perceived personal relationship with gift recipients. With the expansion of the manufacturing sector in the early 20th century, this pattern changed, as many Americans found it easier or more convenient to use manufactured goods as Christmas presents. Waits argues that this shift problematized gift giving, for it seemed to contaminate what was supposed to be a spontaneous outpouring of personal warmth and regard with the cold, impersonal values of the market. In addition, Americans worried that they might choose a wrong or unwanted gift, thereby revealing that their friendships and family relationships were not as close or intimate as they hoped. The uneasiness occasioned by this transition from handicrafts to manufactures, Waits contends, produced "a wide variety of anxiety-reducing and decontaminating mechanisms" (49) such as gift certificates. Created by merchandisers to allay fears that one might give a friend or relative an unwanted or inappropriate present, these new items of exchange allowed recipients to choose whatever they liked, and obviated the need to give mere money, which seemed to be too impersonal a gift. Retailers and manufacturers also resorted to new advertising techniques, assuring apprehensive shoppers, for instance, that a Hamilton watch or a Stetson hat were among the "gifts everyone wanted" (46-48).

Waits' focus on gift giving has both strengths and weaknesses. By focusing on gift exchanges between different groups--parents and children, husbands and wives, employers and workers, friends and relatives--he puts social relationships in high relief, and examines them from a useful vantage point. The Modern Christmas in America abounds with interesting and insightful observations about gender roles, economic relationships, and changing notions of community. In addition, the book does a fine job in showing how the business community both shaped private relationships and perceptions and created a demand for new merchandise through advertising. Its final chapter, which deals with developments in Christmas gift giving since World War II, puts an ironic twist on the conventional wisdom that businessmen created Christmas and the attendant frenzy of present-buying for their own economic benefit. After turning the Christmas season into the crucial annual event for many retailers and manufacturers, the business community discovered that "consumer attitudes ... were hard to discern in advance so that retailers could stock accordingly" (196-97). Thus what was intended to be a marketing and retailing bonanza could become a financial disaster if shoppers bought less or differently than expected. In essence, Waits argues, Christmas looms too large in the postwar U.S. economy, making the holiday season a time for "wariness and caution," among business leaders, and leaving them prone to "painfully explicit" expressions of self doubt (197).

On the other hand, Waits' emphasis on gift giving as the defining characteristic of Christmas may seem reductive or simplistic to some readers. He eschews any discussion of the religious dimension of Christmas because the "secular aspects of the celebration, such as gift giving, the Christmas dinner, and the gathering of the family members, have dwarfed its religious aspects in resources spent and in concern given" (3). Waits seems not to have considered the problems inherent in a simplistic secular/religious dichotomy, or even the possibility that the "secular" activities he cites may have significant religious underpinnings. In addition, Waits appears to believe that economic considerations always predominate over religious beliefs in motivating Americans' approach to Christmas and to gift giving. His decision to concentrate on popular, mass-market magazines to the virtual exclusion of religious periodicals and publications begs the question of how religious concepts and values might have informed and shaped economic choices. Focusing on a relatively narrow body of evidence, Waits also misses some obvious opportunities to illuminate the trends he delineates. One is struck, for example, by his failure to comment upon, or even mention, O. Henry's classic The Gift of the Magi, a popular stow written during the period covered by his study. In a similar vein, Waits' secondary sources are often dated, making it difficult for him to relate his account of changes in the celebration of Christmas to recent work in U.S. social and cultural history.

These objections aside, The Modern Christmas in America remains a useful and entertaining work. Waits has examined an important and heretofore largely ignored subject, and his analysis sheds light on a surprisingly broad range of topics. Well-written and copiously illustrated, his book should interest general readers as well as historians of U.S. business, society, and culture.

Scott C. Martin Bowling Green State University