Word: storefronts
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...celebration, where people get very excited or perhaps even enter into trances and feel as though they have made contact with the deities that way. But the distinction between what's religious and what's recreational is a pretty fine line to draw. If you look at a contemporary storefront Pentacostalist Sunday morning's worship, you'll find people dancing, you'll find a lot of music, and you'll find a some ingredients of traditional kinds of festivities...
...ever-so-liberal Cambridge, the vast majority of shops have by now replaced “Merry Christmas” with “Season’s Greetings” or “Happy Holidays” in their storefront windows, if they give any indication whatsoever that the holiday shopping season is underway. Their intentions are anything but insidious—eager not to alienate potential customers, merchants have downgraded their well-wishing from mildly religious to totally bland. Unlike government buildings, stores are not required by law to maintain non-denominational decorations, but instead choose...
Sentimentalists will object here that shopkeepers’ motives for polluting their storefront displays with tinsel, holly, and plastic candelabras are an expression of holiday good cheer, perverse financial considerations be damned. That’s a very pleasant thought, but it defies common sense. This isn’t someone’s living room—it’s the marketplace, and the only warmth that matters is that of customers’ grabbing hands. Storeowners aren’t trying to cheer you up or brighten your day; they’re trying to pander...
Most of these traditional festivities were religious, as Christmas still faintly is. But the line between religion and recreation can be a fuzzy one, since in so many religions--from ancient Dionysian worship to modern-day Brazilian Candomble and storefront Pentecostalism--the best way to contact the deity or deities is to get up and dance and sing and shout. The climax of the ritual celebration was not a drunken stupor but ecstatic union with the gods...
Seok-hee Lee, product manager for MoMA Retail, which has sold 3,500 of the dolls since January, thinks they're here to stay. "The more you get to know each character, the more you get attached," she says. As for Nakamura, he still displays the dolls in his storefront window. "We don't carry fad items, and if we do, they burn out especially fast," he says. "Uglydolls are a constant seller. They hit an emotional chord in people...