Some people get ill from eating too much on Thanksgiving, but rushing to the sales the day after makes others sick to their stomachs.
The day after Thanksgiving is widely recognized as the biggest shopping day of the year, but Adbusters, a media advocacy organization in Vancouver, British Columbia, has rechristened it Buy Nothing Day. The event is a call for people to boycott stores and shops in an effort to curb consumerism.
The organization, according to its Web site, is “dedicated to reinventing the outdated paradigms of our consumer culture and building a brave new understanding of living,” and is perhaps best known for its newsletter and parodies of famous commercials. Buy Nothing Day is an 8-year-old invention of Adbusters, and observances are held all over the world, including Eugene.
Hope Marston, organizer of the Eugene Buy Nothing Day celebration, said that the “holiday” was created to encourage people not to buy something on the biggest shopping day of the year.
“Rampant consumerism is a sickness that affects a lot of people. It’s a real waste,” she said. “It’s not OK to buy junk just to throw it away later.”
Instead of taking her credit card to the mall Friday, Marston has organized the celebration’s first annual winter coat exchange to encourage people not to buy new ones.
“Instead of trying to convince people in malls about why they should buy nothing, we’re trying to do something positive for the community,” she said. “There’s a really good spirit about this kind of thing in this community, though I don’t think Abercrombie & Fitch will go along with it.”
Tom Liacas, campaigns manager for Adbusters, said Buy Nothing Day is meant to be a media event as much as an actual celebration.
“We as a society are gearing up for another round of shopping, but can we ecologically afford to keep buying stuff we don’t need?” he said.
The concept, Liacas said, was not really intended to halt consumer spending completely on Friday, but rather to spark discussions about the subject and to get people to examine their own shopping habits.
“It doesn’t matter if you shop,” he said. “Just think about the role consumerism plays in your own life.”
Liacas said that the idea of curbing consumerism appeals to people not only in heavily populated and industrialized countries but in lesser-developed nations as well.
“People sign up to organize Buy Nothing Day in their own countries, and we’ve had people sign up in countries as far away as India and Hungary,” he said.
The Rev. Heather Parr, a clergy assistant at St. Mary’s Episcopalian Parish, where the event is being held, said her church does a lot of charity work with needy and homeless people and agrees with the ethos behind Buy Nothing Day.
“I think we have a tendency to overconsume and confuse what we want with what we need,” Parr said. “We should be looking toward others’ needs instead of our own wants.”
The coat exchange will take place at St. Mary’s Episcopal Parish on the corner of East 13th Avenue and Pearl Street in Eugene from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Friday.
For more information about Buy Nothing Day and Adbusters, visit www.adbusters.org.