Thanks for Nothin’
Until I was about thirty our family was in the habit of exchanging gifts every Christmas. The base of the tree burgeoned with packages and on Christmas morning we took turns presenting and opening our gifts. In my late twenties I started a photography business on a shoestring. That Christmas I couldn’t afford to buy presents and, unable to reciprocate, I asked not to receive any either. I opted out of the gift exchange.
Like the child at the edge of the playground left out of the games, I sat and watched the rest of the family open their presents. It felt strange and uncomfortable. I didn’t mind not receiving gifts. It was my inability to give any that troubled me and I began to ask myself what that meant. Does the giving of a gift equal love? Of course not but our consumer culture pressures us to conform to this annual convention. It is just that: a convention. But how many of us question it?
My mother recognized that our gift-giving habit was a financial strain for everyone. Many families can ill afford to incur debt to put presents under the tree. I was living on a small budget in an expensive city and my younger siblings were at school. We gradually evolved to picking names out of a hat, then to dropping the gift exchange altogether. My mother still liked to fill stockings for us, usually with practical things like toothbrushes and personal alarms, but even that was abandoned. We continued to give gifts to the littlest ones of our extended family but the adults were satisfied with good food and togetherness.
Though the tradition of gift-giving might be rooted in the story of the Magi and their gifts to the baby Jesus, our modern hyper-commercialization of Christmas has become a very odd way to celebrate the birth of one who renounced all worldly goods. For many people, Christmas is just a secular holiday with little or no connection to its Christian origins, and so we have arrived at something resembling a latter-day Saturnalia.
The Lord of Misrule rules as Black Friday shoppers swarm like sharks in a feeding frenzy.
Black Friday, the day after American Thanksgiving, is the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season, but so ingrained in our culture is the idea of Christmas as an excuse to shop that the season now starts in September. Black Friday itself has become a scene of stampedes, fights, shootings, injuries, and fatalities. The Christian origins of the season have not just fallen by the wayside, they have been trampled underfoot.
The flip side of Black Friday is Buy Nothing Day. First organized here in Canada by Vancouver artist Ted Dave in 1992 as “a day for society to examine the issue of overconsumption,” it was later taken up by Adbusters Magazine:
“Buy Nothing Day isn’t just about changing your habits for one day, but about starting a lasting lifestyle commitment to consuming less and producing less waste.”
People in more than 60 countries observe Buy Nothing Day in a growing international protest against consumerism. Among the many ways to keep the day, participants might cut up their credit cards, disrupt shoppers by joining a “Zombie Walk” in a large department store, donate to the Buy Nothing Coat Exchange in their neighbourhood, or celebrate the Earth by going on a Buy Nothing Hike. Or do nothing. It’s free. And you don’t need an app!
On the heels of Buy Nothing Day came Buy Nothing Christmas, conceived by a group of Canadian Mennonites. The full-page ad in their national church magazine read “If you think Christmas has gotten too commercialized, here’s your chance to do nothing about it.” The group promotes buying locally or making your own gifts.
If you still love giving gifts but want to avoid the mall, here are some alternatives:
Make or bake it yourself
Offer your skills: cleaning/repairing/gardening/carpentry/sewing
Give consumables like food baskets or event tickets
Pay for a membership, subscription, or a class
Buy an experience like a massage or dinner at a restaurant
Buy vintage or second-hand
Donate to charity in the name of your loved one