Happy Black Friday!

Believe it or not, Americans get to celebrate two holidays this week. Thursday is - duh - Thanksgiving, also known affectionately as Turkey Day. Friday, you may know, is the busiest shopping day of the year. But did you also know that it’s Buy Nothing Day? Haven’t hear of it? Not too surprised, really. The folks as Adbusters and some other communist types made it an unofficial holiday awhile back. It may sound impossible, or like torture, to some of us, but it’s actually a great chance to step back and think about some things, and to enjoy things we don’t otherwise have the time to do. To put it simply, Buy Nothing Day is a day to step back from the commercial mania and enjoy our blessings, our friends, our family, and all that we already have.

If you’re sick of crowded shopping malls, elbowing people for the last copy of your favorite TV show on DVD, getting stuck in traffic jams, and feeling harried and frenzied at the end of a long day of making a million decisions and waiting in never-ending lines, consider celebrating Buy Nothing Day. I believe you’ll be so happy with how it turns out that I’d give you a money-back guarantee, but that would sort of defeat the purpose.

And A Partridge In a PearTree…or, Twelve Ways to Celebrate Buy Nothing Day:

1) Stay warm and sleep in. Snuggle with your honey, stuffed animal, kids, or pillow (rather than waiting in line in the cold for the chance to trample someone on the way to acquiring a cheap DVD player!).

2) Bake cookies (don’t forget to buy your ingredients before Friday…) and share them with friends, family, and maybe some people that you meet while you’re….

3) Walking down the street or a park or a forest.

4) Buy Nothing but Make Something instead! Find something you can re-create in one of those catalogues that inundate your house. Learn a new skill and knit a sweater, sew a dress, or make a solar-powered xylophone. Make Christmas gifts, or…

5) Hold an impromptu “free market.” Invite people to bring their handiwork, preserves, baked goods, items they no longer need or use, flowers, produce, and barter and trade for what you’d like for yourself or for those you love.

6) Save a few thousand trees and the Boreal Forest. Unsubscribe from mail-order catalog and junk mail lists here.

7) Follow some clever Brits and set up a couch at the local park or high-traffic area (how about a mall parking lot? A twist on the Tail Gate party…) and serve tea and crumpets, or coffee and scones. Ask your neighbors what they like to do for fun.

8) Serve at a local shelter. Thanksgiving is a big day for service, but if you didn’t get the chance, do it Friday instead.

9) Put together a slideshow of family photos and history and tell stories. Ask your grandparents and parents about what things were like when they grew up, what they liked to do, how they got in trouble. Write the stories down and give them as gifts for Christmas.

10) Read a book. Memorize a poem. Read out loud to each other. Write a letter to your grandma, or someone else you’re thankful for.

11) Get dirty. Play dodgeball or touch football with your family and neighbors. Top it off with a turkey, cranberry, mashed-potato sandwich.

12) Talk with your family about how you’d like to spend Christmas. Brainstorm ways to be less consumption-driven, and more appreciative of what you have and how you can give back to others who have less. Begin to celebrate the true spirit of Christmas today.