Buy Nothing Day is a minor event of protest against consumerism. In North America, the United Kingdom, Finland and Sweden, Buy Nothing Day is held the day after U.S.

Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden ...

, concurrent to Black Friday; elsewhere, it is held the following day, which is the last Saturday in November."Buy Nothing Day
"''Adbusters.org'' Buy Nothing Day was founded in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

by artist Ted Dave and subsequently promoted by ''

Adbusters The Adbusters Media Foundation is a Canadian-based not-for-profit, pro-environment organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, British Columbia. Adbusters describes itself as "a global network of artists, activis ...

'' based in Canada. The first Buy Nothing Day was organized in Canada in September 1992 "as a day for society to examine the issue of overconsumption." In 1997, it was moved to the Friday after American Thanksgiving, also called " Black Friday", which is one of the ten busiest shopping days in the United States. In 2000, some advertisements by ''Adbusters'' promoting Buy Nothing Day were denied advertising time by almost all major television networks except for

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

. Soon, campaigns started appearing in the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Austria, Germany, New Zealand, Japan, the Netherlands, France, Norway, Finland.

Activities

Various gatherings and forms of protest have been used on Buy Nothing Day to draw attention to

overconsumption Overconsumption describes a situation where a consumer overuses their available goods and services to where they can't, or don't want to, replenish or reuse them. In microeconomics, this may be described as the point where the marginal cost of ...

: * Free, non-commercial street parties * Sit-in * Buy Nothing Day hike: Rather than celebrating consumerism by shopping, participants celebrate the Earth and nature. * Buy Nothing Coat Exchange: Coats are collected throughout the month of November from anyone who wants to donate and brought to various locations within each state. On the day after Thanksgiving, many opt out of shopping on Black Friday to donate or volunteer. Anyone who needs a winter coat is welcome to exchange one or just take one. Originating in

Providence, Rhode Island Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts ...

, similar winter coat exchanges take place on Buy Nothing Day in

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

, and

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...

Buy Nothing Christmas

Buy Nothing Christmas started unofficially in 1968, when Ellie Clark and her family decided to publicly disregard the commercial aspects of the Christmas holiday. Contemporarily, a movement was created to extend

' Buy Nothing Day into the entire Christmas season. Buy Nothing Christmas first became official in 2001 when a small group of Canadian

Mennonite Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radi ...

s created a website and gave the movement a name. Adbusters in 2011 renamed the event Occupy Xmas, a reference to the

Occupy movement The Occupy movement was an international populist socio-political movement that expressed opposition to social and economic inequality and to the perceived lack of "real democracy" around the world. It aimed primarily to advance social and econo ...

. Buy Nothing Day was first joined with Adbusters' Buy Nothing Christmas campaign. Shortly after, Lauren Bercovitch, the production manager at Adbusters Media Foundation, publicly embraced the principles of Occupy Xmas, advocating "something as simple as buying locally—going out and putting money into your local economy—or making your Christmas presents". Previously, the central message of Occupy Xmas and Occupy Christmas differed in that Occupy Xmas called for a "Buy Nothing Christmas" and Occupy Christmas called for support of local economy, artists, and craftspeople in holiday shopping. The union of these ideologies calls for a Buy Nothing Day to kick off a season of supporting local economy and family.

References

External links

The Buy Nothing Day
- thematic page (2019) by Adbusters Media Foundation
BND UK information and support for UK campaigners
{{Thanksgiving, state=collapsed Criticism of the commercialization of Christmas Consumer boycotts November observances Friday observances Observances based on the date of Thanksgiving (United States) Recurring events established in 1992 Unofficial observances Waste minimisation 1992 establishments in Canada Retailing by time of year

Activities

Buy Nothing Christmas

See also

References

External links