Next Friday, November 28th is an international holiday from consumerism, materialist ideals and spending. In North America “Buy Nothing Day” is celebrated on the 28th, but is also recognized internationally on the 29th. Hide away your piggy banks, wallets, debit cards and visas; Buy Nothing Day helps to fight financial crisis and furthermore the environmental complications inflicted by a commodity culture. In a culture consumed by material possessions and production, we are running down our money as well as our natural resources.
This day of protest is cleverly and effectively placed in the thick of shopping fever, just a month before Christmas. People madly pacing through malls, grasping more bags than any one person is meant to carry and spending every penny they do or don’t have. Christmas is the hardest time of year to break from spending all together. Ads for Buy Nothing Day 2008 even feature slogans such as “Take the Plunge” and “Buy Nothing Christmas”. This introduces the marketer’s nightmare of an immaterial Christmas.
Amidst all the shopping chaos there are the supporters of Buy Nothing Day - lined up in shopping malls, Wal-Marts, department stores and even on street corners – making every spender just a little uncomfortable. Dressed as zombies with shopping carts, cutting up visas and circling aisles aimlessly not purchasing a thing, these protestors challenge shopper’s spending habits, confront their financial insecurities and bring light to the shallow principles surrounding Christmas. Hooray for Buy Nothing Day in exposing the severity of consumerism.
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