Arla Shephard

The Daily

Long lines, angry crowds and an unadulterated level of stress have become as synonymous with the Thanksgiving holiday as turkey, football and pumpkin pie for some.

I'm talking, of course, about the day after Thanksgiving, coined in the '70s as "Black Friday," a day when stores open their doors at the crack of dawn promoting "One-Day Only" sales. Crowds, in return, rush to kick off the holiday season by burning holes in their bank accounts.

I vividly remember Black Friday one year when I was younger: I happily awoke at what I thought was a reasonable hour to go shopping with my mother, but was greeted by mountains of shopping bags and very tired-looking parents.

As it turned out, they had woken up at 4 a.m. to stand in line at Wal-Mart, in order to cash in on the store discounts. My mother had even fought other women for some of the numerous appliances that littered our living room floor. I learned then and there the seriousness in which some people took this day.

Some activists and environmentalists, on the other hand, are taking a stand against this rampant consumer consumption.

Adbusters Media Foundation has launched their annual "Buy Nothing Day," a 24-hour moratorium on spending, urging people to "seek out greener alternatives to unrestrained consumption," according to their Web site.

"So much emphasis has been placed on buying carbon offsets and compact fluorescent light bulbs and hybrid cars that we are losing sight of the core cause of our environmental problems," said Kalle Lasn, the co-founder of Adbusters Media in a press release advertising the international campaign. "We consume far too much."

Buy Nothing Day began in Vancouver, Canada in the early '90s, and has become an international phenomenon of sorts, set to coincide with the largest shopping day of the year. Activists around the world display their disapproval in the form of street protests or family-friendly outings, so long as spending money is not involved.

"Buy Nothing Day isn't just about changing your routine for one day," Lasn said in the press release. "It's about starting a lasting lifestyle commitment. With over 6 billion people on the planet, it is the responsibility of the most affluent — the upper 20 percent that consumes 80 percent of the world's resources — to set out on a new path."

Junior Cindy Le heard about the Adbusters campaign in one of her English classes, when discussing it in relation to cultural studies, but was unconvinced by the message Adbusters was doling out.

"I [saw that] Adbusters actually tries to sell things [online] and I thought that that was a huge contradiction to what they were trying to do," she said. "I mean, if they tell people not to buy anything after Thanksgiving, why are they trying to get people to buy things from them?"

Le plans on shopping for Christmas and personal gifts on the day after Thanksgiving, in order to take advantage of the best deals.

"I absolutely love to shop," she said. "I do it all the time. Maybe because it's a great bonding experience since I always shop with my friends and my mom and I think it's really fun when done in moderation."

Other students, like sophomore Elizabeth Smith, avoid shopping the day after Thanksgiving, "because that's when all the crazies are out," she said.

Smith enjoys shopping but does her holiday spending on weekdays in the afternoons closer to Christmas, to avoid the hectic bustle.

"Only serious, professional shoppers go out the day after Thanksgiving, and to me it is just not worth dealing with them just so I can save a couple bucks," Smith said.

Le found the Adbusters campaign unpromising.

"I understand that [Adbusters are] activists," she said. "But I think it's too late seeing as it's the biggest shopping day of the year."

Professor David Fluharty of the Program on the Environment agreed that the Adbusters message could be construed as misguided.

He argued that a boycott on spending would need to be sustained in order to make a difference in the long run, which "is a much harder request from consumers," he said.

"It seems to me that a one-day moratorium on consumption is a catchy way to engage folks but the real issue is long term focus," he said. "Not buying today but buying tomorrow is no real benefit but a potential cost to the main point I think Adbusters is attempting to make."

Fluharty pointed out that consumption for the sake of consumption can sometimes be reinforced by the desire to support the economy or employment.

"How to break the spiral yet recognize the employment and manufacturing benefits is very difficult," he said. "The real issue is development of a consumer ethic related to consumption that promotes quality of life long term."

It's hard to pinpoint the results of Buy Nothing Day, aside from spreading awareness of a cause that inspired Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me fame to produce the documentary What Would Jesus Buy?, in conjunction with the non-profit anti-consumerism organization The Church of Stop Shopping.

Oddly enough, on most years Black Friday is not the busiest retail shopping day of the year, having been beaten out by the Saturday before Christmas, in effect proving that anti-consumerist campaigns shouldn't focus on any one particular day. Those who take the day after Thanksgiving seriously will probably continue to line up outside of stores at 4 a.m. no matter what the campaign is targeting.

[Reach reporter Arla Shephard at features@thedaily.washington.edu.]