| List of Illustrations | |
| Introduction | 3 |
| Ch. 1 | Time Is Money | 17 |
| Church Festivals and Commercial Fairs: The Peddling of Festivity | 19 |
| "Enterprise Holds Carnival, While Poetry Keeps Lent": From Sabbatarian Discipline to Romantic Longing | 23 |
| A Commercial Revolution: National Holidays and the Consumer Culture | 32 |
| Ch. 2 | St. Valentine's Day Greeting | 38 |
| St. Valentine's Pilgrimage from Christian Martyr to Patron of Love | 40 |
| The Handmade and the Ready-Made: Of Puzzle Purses, Chapbooks, and the Valentine Vogue | 47 |
| Remaking the Holiday's Rituals: The Marketing of Valentines, 1840-1860 | 63 |
| Mock Valentines: A Private Charivari | 77 |
| "A Meaner Sort of Merchandize" or "A Pleasure without Alloy"? The New Fashion Contested and Celebrated | 85 |
| Expanding Holiday Trade: From Confectioners' Hearts to Hallmark Cards | 94 |
| Ch. 3 | Christmas Bazaar | 105 |
| The Rites of the New Year: Revels, Gifts, Resolutions, and Watch Nights | 108 |
| The Birth of the Christmas Market, 1820-1900 | 122 |
| Shopping towards Bethlehem: Women and the Victorian Christmas | 148 |
| Christmas Cathedrals: Wanamaker's and the Consecration of the Marketplace | 159 |
| Magi, Miracles, and Macy's: Enchantment and Disenchantment in the Modern Celebration | 169 |
| Putting Christ in Christmas and Keeping Him There: The Piety of Protest | 175 |
| Ch. 4 | Easter Parade | 192 |
| "In the Beauty of the Lilies": The Art of Church Decoration and the Art of Window Display | 194 |
| Piety, Fashion, and a Spring Promenade | 210 |
| "A Bewildering Array of Plastic Forms": Easter Knickknacks and Novelties | 219 |
| Raining on the Easter Parade: Protest, Subversion, and Disquiet | 234 |
| Ch. 5 | Mother's Day Bouquet | 244 |
| Anna Jarvis and the Churches: Sources of a New Celebration | 246 |
| Commercial Floriculture and the Moral Economy of Flowers: The Marketing of Mother's Day | 256 |
| Pirates, Profiteers and Trespassers: Negotiating the Bounds of Church, Home, and Marketplace | 267 |
| The Invention of Father's Day: The Humbug of Modern Ritual | 275 |
| Epilogue: April Fools? Trade, Trickery, and Modern Celebration | 293 |
| Acknowledgments | 305 |
| Notes | 311 |
| Index | 359 |
