When we were kids, my brothers and I greeted the arrival of the Christmas catalogues like other people welcome a long- lost child. In a froth, we fought over possession of the Wishbook as if it were gold.
Sometimes Mom cruelly made us wait while she checked the book for useless stuff (like clothes) before we could drool over the glossy pictures of toys, Toys, TOYS!
But things are different now. I’m different now. I loathe shopping.
I hate the way stuff accumulates in my house, and I get far more pleasure out of dumping a load at Goodwill than from bringing new purchases into my house.
So maybe it’s no wonder that I religiously mark Buy Nothing Day, the once-a-year celebration of not shelling out money.
Initiated by artist Ted Dave in Canada, the day of non-consumerism has been mostly an underground movement, as American media don’t like to promote the idea of not spending. It’s been adopted by Adbusters magazine, the fun folks who produced the documentary, “Affluenza.” (They don’t get much hype, either.)
It’s no coincidence that this day is marked on the Friday after Thanksgiving, supposedly the biggest retail day in America. That day is called Black Friday because many retailers make as much as 50 percent of their yearly revenue in the holiday season, putting them in the black.
In years past, Walmart has booked $1 billion in sales that day. A billion. In one day.
Under the societal pressure to spend, people rack up debts that take months, even years, to pay off. Children think of holidays as greedfests instead of spiritual or cultural touchstones.
Given the prevailing economic winds, I’m sure many people are cutting back by necessity, but that’s not what Buy Nothing Day is about. It’s about the spending, yes, but it’s more about the view. Believing that holidays aren’t about extravagance is the heart of the philosophy. So is discerning between want and need.
News outlets cover the shopping frenzy of Black Friday as if it’s a natural disaster, showing long lines of people waiting in the bitter cold at 4 a.m. for the privilege of forking over cash.
Is that really a holy day? I wouldn’t camp out in November for anything short of a private chat with the Dalai Lama.
Several years ago, Bill McKibben, an environmental writer based in New England, proposed the Hundred Dollar Holiday. He suggested that households limit their spending to $100 for gifts, food, and decorations — in a word, everything — as a way to rediscover the joy of a family holiday. The idea was picked up by churches, and then by the alternative media, and is slowly spreading throughout the country.
“Christmas had become something to endure,” McKibben writes, “at least as much as it had become something to enjoy. . . . Instead of an island of peace amid a busy life, it was an island of bustle.”
He writes that he’s regularly thanked by people who say they’ve rediscovered what holidays are really about.
Whether Americans are ready to power down on the actual red-letter day of their faith is uncertain, but keeping those wallets closed for one day a year should be doable.
In fact, I’ve marked Buy Nothing Day while working in retail. (I used to brown-bag lunch to a food store on that day.) And it’s a relief not to deal with malls and big box stores when half the Earth’s population is in there trying to grab the last gotta- have-it item.
So on Nov. 28, don’t plan on seeing me at the shopping center. I’ll be at home, contemplating my blessings and acknowledging that, for just one day, I have enough.
Marcia Darnell (ink@amigo.net) lives, writes, and reads a lot in Alamosa.
