Christmas makes me cranky. I'll admit that right up front. Oh, there was a time when the thought of Christmas evoked Norman Rockwell memories of snug beds on snowy nights filled with pleasurable anticipation. Family and friends together, sharing food, gifts and good cheer.
There was a time when a Muzak version of "Rocking Around the Christmas Tree" did not make me want to run screaming from a store, rending my garments and apologizing to the baby Jesus.
Maybe it's the years I spent in high school and college working in drug stores, department stores and malls that did it to me. Working late to milk the last buck out of the season, the same insipid soundtrack playing over and over. Watching shoppers get progressively more desperate and testy till Christmas Eve, when their shopping took on the quality of a rampage. They would run half-crazed through the aisles, grabbing at tube socks, candy, cheap cologne, singing alligators — and yes, even fruitcake, not the good kind, either.
I do not hate Christmas. But I do hate the way we've cheapened it with overwrought sentimentality and runaway consumerism.
We have made Christmas into a time of stress, maxed-out credit cards, certifiable depression and an opportunity to fill our garages, closets and landfills with crap that we can't use and don't want.
That's why this year, I pledge to observe National Buy Nothing Day on Nov. 28, the day after Thanksgiving, reputed to be the busiest shopping day of the year.
Buy Nothing Day began in the Pacific Northwest more than a decade ago as a 24-hour consumer fast and celebration of sustainable living. The idea is to become more aware of our absurd level of consumption and the effect it has on the environment and the rest of the world.
The holiday is being promoted by Adbusters Media Foundation, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and has been growing steadily. Perhaps the biggest boon to awareness of the movement came in 1997, when all three major networks refused to air a paid commercial advocating Buy Nothing Day, prompting stories in The Wall Street Journal and New York Times and giving the movement far more visibility than it could have afforded to buy on television.
Now, groups in more than 30 countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Norway and Denmark, have taken up the cause, staging peaceful protests and events promoting creative ways to celebrate Christmas without buying into overconsumption.
To help activists promote the holiday from spending, Adbusters (www.adbusters.org) provides free downloadable clip art, posters, stickers, handbills website banners and gift exemption vouchers to exchange with friends and family, releasing them from the obligation to buy gifts for each other. They also provide professionally produced 30-second radio spots that say:
"The average North American consumes five times more than a Mexican, 10 times more than a Chinese person, and 30 times more than a person from India.
(Burp!)
We are the most voracious consumers in the world — a world that could die because of the way we North Americans live.
Give it a rest!
November 28th is Buy Nothing Day."
One of the more popular demonstrations staged in several places is getting together a group of people dressed in doctor's smocks and handing out prescriptions to cure seasonal "affluenza," an ailment caused by overconsumption. The prescriptions advise patients to go home and rest for 24 hours.
In the Netherlands last year, Buy Nothing Day activists set up a shopping-free zone where tired shoppers could rest and consult with buy nothing coaches on how to give the gift of time and love instead of consumer goods.
The Whirlmart resistance group provides a design for iron-on transfers for T-shirts and outlines a performance ritual: A group wearing the T-shirts gathers and pushes empty shopping carts through the aisles for an hour without buying anything. The website advises performers to be prepared for a wide range of reactions. "If confronted, remain calm and explain that you are not protesting, but performing a consumption awareness ritual. … If they accuse you of loitering or solicitation, you might kindly explain that though you may appear to be consciously not shopping you are actually thinking long and hard about just what to buy. Some Whirlers have used a tactic of breaking formation and dispersing throughout the store when ambushed, which has also proved successful."
A Canadian Christian group offers a three-session Christmas study guide that takes a critical look at the gifts the three wise men gave Jesus, questions the roots of our current way of celebrating Christmas, and offers Christian responses to Christmas consumerism. At altgifts.org you'll find links to organizations you can donate to in the name of a loved one instead of giving a gift.
Other actions include organizing a craft talent swap, where people share tools and instruction for making Christmas gifts and — one of my favorites — singing anti-consumerist Christmas carols in malls. The lyrics are offered by The Center for a New American Dream at www.newdream.org. (They also offer ideas for inexpensive, creative, and socially and ecologically responsible gifts.)
Among my faves: "Uh Oh We're in the Red, Dear" (To the tune of "Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer") and "Slow Down Ye Frantic Shoppers" (to the tune of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"). Come on, sing a stanza with me:
To some folks Christmas means a time for gathering with friends/ And enemies might take it as a time to make amends/ But TV says it's time for pricey gifts and selfish ends/
Now it's time we decided for ourselves, for ourselves/Yes it's time we decided for ourselves.
I feel more holiday cheer already.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't, or that I won't, buy presents for people I love. All I'm saying is that I'm not buying one single thing, not opening my wallet, not setting foot in a store on Nov. 28. And I will think long and hard about what purchases I do make on other days. I want to make sure I'm giving something that won't end up in a landfill and that wasn't made by sweatshop workers who make less in a month than I spend on lunch.
Contributing Editor Susan F. Edwards can be reached at susan.edwards15@verizon.net.
This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 3, 2003.