New Quaker Notebook

A cure for the secular Christmas? Black Friday in the US has turned out to be a hideous, cancerous tumor on the cell walls of capitalism. I suppose we knew that already, but it helps to remind ourselves that consumer buying has become more than just another "-ism" to ponder. Like type 2 diabetes, lung cancer, and coronary heart disease, consumerism is a disease caused by the addictive devotion to getting stuff and more stuff at a great price. Knocking people down and getting violent over plasma televisions are all symptoms of this capitalist disorder. Does anyone remember these past highlights of devoted consumerism?¹

December 2004 - Two women and a teenage girl are arrested after fighting over a parking space near a Toys "R" Us in West Hartford, CN.

December 2002 - A 41-year-old man is arrested at a mall in Connecticut after stealing another motorist's parking space, yelling at the driver, and spraying him with Mace.

November 2002 - Shoppers stampede a Wal-Mart store in Riverside, CA, running over a 35-year-old woman and fracturing her foot and hip.

November 1998 - Frantic "Furby" shoppers bite one woman and knock another one down at a Wal-Mart in O'Fallon, IL.

December 1996 - A Wal-Mart employee in New Brunswick, Canada, is hospitalized after being trampled by a crowd of 300 "Tickle Me Elmo" shoppers.

December 1993 - Drivers abandon their cars in the streets outside a Toronto shopping center, eager to get to the day-after-Christmas sales. A policeman runs out of $20 parking-ticket slips ticketing the vehicles.

December 1992 - A 24-year-old clerk at a Toronto Sport Shoppe in Canada is kicked, punched, and bitten by a group trying to grab products from shelves. Four people are arrested; the clerk is sent to the hospital.

November 1983 - A 75-year-old man is knocked down by shoppers trying to get to Cabbage Patch dolls at a Jefferson Ward store in North Miami Beach, FL. In the same month, shoppers in Washington, DC, try to bribe store clerks for access to the dolls.

We are shocked by this devotion to excess and fret over it, but we still tolerate it, much in the same way we tolerate alcoholism, anorexia, obesity, and other disorders caused by our lifestyle choices. So it's easy to be amused by the international Buy Nothing Day, the Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping,² and the ridiculous arrest of seven people (including a man dressed as Santa Claus) in Newark, DE, for walking around the Christiana Mall wearing T-shirts saying "Ask me about nothing" and carrying empty bags with "free samples" of nothing.³

And now there is Buy Nothing Christmas, a "national initiative started by Canadian Mennonites but open to everyone with a thirst for change and a desire for action." Buy Nothing Christmas urges us not simply to buy nothing during the Christmas season but also, more positively, to channel our consumer urges toward alternative gift ideas.

Nowhere, perhaps, are we more torn—between this earthly existence and the promise of God's Kingdom—than during the Christmas season, as we Christians struggle to remember that Christmas is not a birthday party and yet, at the same time, to appear generous and caring for the consumerists who so desperately want to know that there is a cure for their painful cultural disease.

1. See Baltimore Sun, November 26, 2005.
2. The Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping, complete with bleach-blond pompadour and beige polyester suit, is a New York City performance artist and crusader against big-box retailers and out-of-control consumerism. Among his tactics: exorcising a cash register. His website features news, blog, photos, and also videos, especially his Official Tour Video From Shopocalypse 2005.
3. AP, WTOP Radio Network, November 25, 2005.