Black Friday: Buy Nothing Day
It must be around ten years ago that I came across the idea of Buy Nothing Day. It started in Mexico, but took off when it moved to the USA as a response to the conspicuous consumerism of Black Friday. Then the trend spread, and the last Saturday of November was identified as a huge pre-Christmas shopping day in the UK. For several years in a row I blogged about Buy Nothing Day, and put up suggestions for alternative ways to spend the day if you committed yourself to not spending any money at all for a whole Saturday.
This is the first time I have spent November in the USA, and the Black Friday shopathon is every bit as overwhelming as I’d been led to believe. For several weeks the ads have been ramping up; you can’t turn on your laptop without a confetti of ads appearing, and shops everywhere are advertising their intent to turn Thanksgiving into a consumer opportunity.
Last Friday, just before we began Reading Week at the Divinity School, my team and I organized a Cafe Eucharist, the theme of which was Thanksgiving and Giving Thanks. One of the threads in the service was the disconnect between gratitude (thanks for what we have) and consumerism (the goal to get more, more, more). It feels somewhat urgent to me this week to resist the temptation to go shopping over the next few days. Half price practically everything is really tempting, especially just before Christmas. But I feel I would be paying with my soul, not just my dollars. We are going shopping today for the food we need, and firewood, and a tank of petrol/gas. No more. Then we are going to spend four days playing, watching movies, walking up some hills, visiting friends, eating enough but not to excess, reading by the fire, and enjoying the luxury of sleeping late in the mornings. And giving thanks. Anyone want to join us?
7 Responses to “Black Friday: Buy Nothing Day”
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
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As an American doing PhD studies in London at the moment, I agree with your sentiments . . . Black Friday is a bit less intense over here, which I appreciate. The only revision to your activity list for the Thanksgiving weekend I would suggest is to feel free to eat more than just “enough.” No need to make a mess of yourselves, but feasting as celebration is a a good, even biblical thing, as long as its limited to times of feasting (and appropriately balanced with seasons of fasting). Enjoy!
I agree re. feasting. Bring it on!
Sorry for the comment spam Maggi, but I just found out that some close friends of mine in San Diego have revived something they started as a response to Buy Nothing Day. It’s called Make Something Day – the idea behind it is that while they like the anti-consumer vibe of Adbusters’ Buy Nothing Day, they do value giving gifts and being creative, so rather than encouraging people to “fast” from a behaviour, they encourage people to make gifts together on Black Friday.
There’s a Facebook group here: http://www.facebook.com/makesomethingday?ref=notif¬if_t=fbpage_fan_invite&sk=wall
A Twitter account here: http://twitter.com/#!/makesomethingdy
And an article they wrote for Sojourners a few years ago describing it all: http://www.sojo.net/blogs/2008/11/17/celebrate-buy-nothing-day-make-something-day
I think they’re trying to get their old website back up, but if you visit the Facebook page, I’m sure it’ll link up soon.
That’s more my line of thinking, Steve. I think unless you want to drop out of society altogether you have to accept that you are paying for something every day (electricity, mortgage or rent, etc…). It’s the excessive, stuff I find worrying. Shopping has become a leisure activity in itself: how pointless is that? Making things, recycling, giving things away that you don’t need, decluttering, mending things that are broken – so much more constructive. Or just ignore all of that and go for a nice long walk. That’s what we are doing this morning, before we go to our friends’ place for dinner later.
In the past we had castles of power and cathedrals of worship.
Now we have office blocks and shopping malls.
‘Buy Nothing day’
hmmmmm . . . .
Wasn’t there once a weekly event called Sunday?
Yes!!!!!!! lets make Sunday sacred again. Iam sure there are lots of people who feel the same way. Why not pray and praise our creator instead.