Friday is Buy Nothing Day

Or give "gifts of life" through the heifer foundation...(PETA folks may want to skip this site!)

Independance is a wonderful thing! These make great gifts for family members "who have everything." (And aren't averse to using animal products like wool, milk, etc.)

And don't forget the OC Department of Social Services--they can always use extra help at Christmas.

What a great idea! I used to love the holiday season but it has become so commercial that I frequently forget the true meaning of this season. For what it's worth, I'm thankful for living in this community.

There should be some ping-pong action as well, and we're rumored to be getting some good food donated from a local restaurant.

I love Buy Nothing Day. I've been attending it for years, and I always come away with something new. See y'all there!

I've always thought that it would be fun to organize a Tofurkey shoot.

kmr

I'll be headed to the grocery store--we've run out of milk...

I got to BND just in time for the open poetry reading. Great stuff. Nice crowd. Excellent after turkey fare from Carrburritos

Also great to see anti-war activist Stan Goff show up. Stan is interviewed in the current issue of The Sun. http://www.thesunmagazine.org/347_Goff.pdf

If you do happen to purchase something on Buy Nothing Day that doesn't mean you failed a test or anything. Just being mindful of consumer excess is important. Alcoholics Anonymous is a multi-step program towards health. Recovery from materialism can be thought of the same way.

How about Buy Nothing Chanukah/Christmas/Kwanzaa? Make all your gifts. Or give people things like a special trip or a special favor. Or at worst buy your gifts used.

I heard the folks at Ad Busters are actually sponsoring such an event.

Somehow the URL got eliminated from my previous post... so let's try again!

http://catalog.heifer.org/index.cfm

I bought a few things for the NC State game tomorrow, and blogged about your site. You guys are cool, but we differ on most things. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

Another gift-giving idea that gets away from the buying of materialistic goods is a gift certificate from Kiva.org. The gift certificate can be sent electronically or printed out to be sent via snail mail. The gift recipient can then choose from a large list of applicants and participate in making a micro-loan to that applicant. Those participating in the loan get updates on the applicant's progress during the year. If the loan is paid back (and most are thus far) the gift recipient gets credit for the amount they loaned and they get to do it all over again. So theoretically, a gift such as this might continue to give joy to the recipient for many years over.

THANK YOU for that suggestion. I just bought several gift certificates from KIVA.org for several folks on my list .

I would happily dodge the entire holiday season except for the fact that the Mister's retail business peaks every December. At least he doesn't sell flat-screen TVs...

Over the years I've developed a terrible aversion to Christmas Morning Wrapping Paper Storms. There should be warnings on the radio. Maybe I'll fake one up for WCOM.