Buy Nothing Day

Buy Nothing Day is a day of protest against consumerism. In North America, the United Kingdom, Finland and Sweden, Buy Nothing Day is held the day after U.S. Thanksgiving, concurrent with Black Friday; elsewhere, it is held the following day, which is also the last Saturday of November.

Created by artist Ted Dave and promoted by magazine and nonprofit Adbusters, Buy Nothing Day encourages people not to shop for one day. Participants may participate in a variety of anti-consumerist and philanthropic activities, such as donating winter coats or marching through stores. Some activists have also extended Buy Nothing Day to cover the entire Christmas shopping season. As of 2001, Buy Nothing Day was observed in over 35 countries. In the late 1990s, Adbusters created a TV commercial to promote Buy Nothing Day in the US, but most television stations refused to air it. Some commentators, particularly business groups, have criticized the event, claiming that it is economically destructive.

History

The holiday was invented by Canadian artist Ted Dave. The Independent journalist Joe Sommerlad traced supporters' philosophy back to the 1899 text The Theory of the Leisure Class, which argued that consumerism was left over from the feudal era and should be discontinued. Soon thereafter, Canadian magazine and nonprofit Adbusters began promoting the day as well. It then spread to the United States, then internationally. It began to be observed in Japan in 1999, and by 2001 was observed in 35 countries around the world.

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.