Buy Less, Give More

While shoppers crowded the malls (and they always do, so why is it news?), Prairie Roots and I strolled about downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. We bought a couple burritos, sat at Starbucks knitting (Prairie Roots) and doing homework (me), and bought some scarves and necklaces for Madville Times Jr. to play with.

Then we went to a movie: What Would Jesus Buy? This documentary, produced by Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me fame, follows the "Reverend" Billy Talen and his Church of Stop Shopping Choir around America during the 2006 Christmas shopping season. Their mission (an important word!): to save Christmas by exposing the mindless, destructive consumerism that corporations and the media foists upon us and our children for their own profit.

Reverend Billy's tactics are funny, if a bit hokey. His exorcisms of credit cards and lapses into speaking in tongues are as much a send-up of the excesses of fundagelical preachers as the excesses of our Christmas shopping mania. The Reverend Billy himself questions the value of his exploits after a protest outside Wal-Mart headquarters that garners little positive attention.

Yet as we gaze in puzzlement and disgust at the bags and boxes of cheap junk from China that we accumulated yesterday, as we get ready for a second day of turning 41st and Louise into the tenth circle of Dante's Inferno, we can perhaps see that the Church of Stop Shopping's performance art has a point. Think about how much time and effort you put into shopping yesterday. Compare that with the time and effort you spent actually playing with your kids, chatting with your spouse, and helping your neighbors. As you searched for the perfect gift, how often did you look on your fellow citizen and think happy Christmas thoughts, and how often did you think, "Don't you take my parking spot!"

As each of us prepares to spend an average of $859 on Christmas gifts, imagine what would happen if we acted on Reverend Billy' message to "buy less and give more." It wouldn't be easy, as shown more than metaphorically by Reverend Billy's own adventures. Throughout the film, whenever the Church of Stop Shopping shows up in public places, malls, and even Disneyland to sing, and whenever the Reverend Billy raises his megaphone to shout "Stop Shopping!" cops and "corporate police" (a most ominous euphemism for private thugs) all too often show up to protect their employers from Constitutionally protected free speech. Our society sends a message that if you're not shopping, you're doing something wrong.

But don't let that stop you from changing your shopping habits. $859 is a lot of money, especially if we multiply that by a few hundred thousand South Dakota shoppers. Suppose we buy only half that much this year. Spend $400 on presents. Save the other $400. Pay down your credit card debt. Put it toward college. Give some to the Banquet, the women's shelter, your local school. $400 from every person in Madison this season would pay for more than half of the new pool.

You decide how to spend your money. But if you think more spending will make Christmas special, think about what one woman in What Would Jesus Buy? says about what her father did for Christmas during the Depression. Fighting back tears, this gentle old lady recalls how her father always made Christmas special by making sure there were apples and oranges, and maybe a pair of boots.

Apples, oranges, maybe a pair of boots. Christmas doesn't have to be any more complicated than that.