Mark Your Calendar: Buy Nothing Day

Disclaimer: I realize that this is going to sound strange coming from someone who writes a blog that's pretty much exclusively about cool things that one can buy.

But as much as I love shopping, I actually purchase relatively little. It's more about the hunt for me, and discovering new design talent and truly beautiful and unique objects. And, especially since I've started this blog and begun spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about the subject of things that one can buy, I've tried to make my purchases really count. My aim is to buy objects of quality and good design, to restrict my purchases to things that we really need or genuinely love, and to choose items whenever possible that are vintage, made by hand, or designed and produced independently. I still succumb to the occasional purchase of "unnecessary plastic objects," as songwriter Nanci Griffith calls them, but I'm doing better.

At the same time, I abhor mindless consumerism and corporate marketers shoving a bunch of junk down our collective throats. Truly, nothing makes my skin crawl like walking into a mass merchandiser pretty much any time between September and January, being bombarded with canned Christmas music, and being confronted with endcap upon endcap of stocking-stuffer crap that nobody wants or needs.

I confess that the holidays are not one of my favorite times of year. It's not just the added stress of the season (though of course, that's a major factor): It's the pressure to spend a bunch of money I don't really have on things that my loved ones may not even like; my kids' (often, but not always) mistaken impression that this is their one chance to bypass my normal no-crap-in-the-house rule and open the floodgates to a bunch of plastic, battery operated junk that will be broken and discarded inside of a few weeks; and the ceaseless, gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that I'm taking part in a pointless, meaningless orgy of greed and wastefulness and I don't know how to stop it.

(Am I harshing your holiday high? Sorry.)

So I welcome and support Buy Nothing Day, which takes place in the United States this Friday, November 23 (aka "the biggest shopping day of the year") and internationally on Saturday, November 24.

Started in 1992 by Vancouver artist Ted Dave and adopted by the Adbusters social activism organization, Buy Nothing Day is a chance for all of us to "examine the issue of over-consumption" and to consider "a lasting lifestyle commitment to consuming less and producing less waste."

I'm going to sit out "Black Friday." And though I will indeed be buying holiday presents for my family, I'm going to do my best to make sure they're things that they'll truly value and that will have personal meaning for them. I'm going to knit scarves (which is all my rookie knitting skills will allow for at this point). I'm going to take family photos and frame them. I'm going to make certificates for outings together in lieu of gifts -- and then actually follow through on them. I'm going to bake simple, yummy things to give to our friends and neighbors. I'm also going to skip the mall entirely and do my holiday shopping at places like Etsy and other independent online retailers as well as at open studios (like the ones in Berkeley this weekend), art and artisan fairs (like this one or this one or this one), and at the small local shops I want to support.

Granted, it'll be harder to go the indie/handmade route for the kids' presents -- though I'm still aiming for quality and longevity over gifts whose pleasures are only temporary. But I figure that if I can do it for the adults on my list, I'll not only be more mindful about my own consumerism, I'll have a better chance of giving gifts that my loved ones will actually appreciate and treasure.

What do you think?