For the past five years or so, instead of observing Black Friday, I have instead observed Buy Nothing Day. I decided a while back that I just can't go along with that whole up-at-four-in-the-morning to shop at the local discount superstore. If I'm going to be up at four in the morning (and I often am), I want to be sitting in my comfy armchair with a cup of coffee at my elbow, a cross stitch project in my lap, and the TV remote lying on the coffee table in front of me. No bargain can drag me out of bed and into a shopping center the day after Thanksgiving. Around the same time I abandoned recreational shopping, I discovered Buy Nothing Day and it fits in perfectly with my mall avoidance mentality. I decided the only things I would allow myself to purchase on the day after Thanksgiving were food and/or movie tickets. That's it.
This year, however, I am a failure. I bought something.
Right now, I'm trying to console myself with the thought that 1) it's something I've thought about purchasing for over a year, 2) I bought it at an independently-owned business, and 3) I was the only customer in the joint, so the shop presumably needed my business rather than merely craved it in order to set some sort of sales record. Speaking of records, I'll go on it by stating that I spent $16 on a Christmas CD at little Canterbury Records in Pasadena. I might have spent even more, but they didn't have the other Christmas CD I was looking for.
I don't have too many principles, and I feel bad about violating this one. Perhaps listening to Sarah McLachlan warble "In the Bleak Midwinter" every Christmas from now on will guilt me into never disobeying my own laws again.
1 comment:
I think buying something at Canterbury still spits in the eye of the Black Friday marketers. I think you should still hold your head up high. In fact, I think we should start a new movement called Buy Nothing Except From Independant Stores Day. Frankly, every day should be BNEFISD but especially on Black Friday.
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