Friday, November 27, 2009

Happy Buy Nothing Day




Today is Buy Nothing Day.  Begun by Vancouver artist Ted Dave, buy nothing day was begun in Vancouver in 1992 and was soon promoted by Adbusters the anti-consumerist organization.

Vox Nova asserts that so-called "Black Friday" is a perverse inversion of the Christian "Good Friday" and that the secular "religion",  "Mammon" has taken over Christian holidays for its own purpose--to try to convince Christians to worship on its altar of consumerism.

This saving money that is supposed to occur en masse on this day, is, Vox Nova purports, a kind of "fast" or "vigil" of Thanksgiving--the celebration of gluttony, and, I think, for Christmas, which has become, in a secular sense, a continuation of the gluttony of "Turkey Day" writ large--a month long "feast" of  "I get what I want".

What are "the holidays" to you?  What can we as Christian people do to preserve the holy meaning of "holy days"?

7 comments:

Cindy said...

I feel bad we had to get milk and bread today. They are complaining in MA about the Thanksgiving Day blue law that has the stores closed on this day and Christmas. The stores think they should be open at all times. Disgraceful.
cindy

Staying in Balance said...

That's ridiculous. I always feel bad for the employees of those stores who have go into work.

Anonymous said...

I was just telling my daughter about the "buy nothing day" after she asked me about Black Friday (sounds vaguely satanic) but couldn't remember what it was. Now I can show her.

Michele said...

couldn't afford to buy anything on friday anyways...

Staying in Balance said...

You know what? You are right, Gunter, it *does* sound vaguely Satanic, doesn't it?

Someone else pointed out that "black Friday" is actually the day in 1929 when the stock market crashed in the U.S.

patrice said...

You're right about the the fact that Black Friday is the day the stock market crashed in 1929.

However, the connotation of Black Friday with regard to the day after Thanksgiving is different. It is the day that retail stores go into the black and start showing a profit for the year. A poor showing on Black Friday is really bad for the retailers.

Staying in Balance said...

True. In recent years, though, some people have been injured by over zealous shoppers on Black Friday, not to mention the over-commercialization of Christmas.

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"Slavery ended in medieval Europe only because the church extended its sacraments to all slaves and then managed to impose a ban on the enslavement of Christians (and of Jews). Within the context of medieval Europe, that prohibition was effectively a rule of universal abolition. "— Rodney Stark

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