The Birthplace of an Idea

Some of the inspiration for this boycott came from reading Judith Levine's Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping. Not Buying It recounts a self-imposed one year ban on purchasing any non-essential items as defined by the author and her partner. Levine had an epiphany while dropping packages on the soggy New York streets amidst the frantic holiday shopping shuffle. The ensuing emotions are recognizable to most consumers, yet few of us stage such staggering counterattacks. In many ways, scaling back and eliminating shopping altogether is seen as eccentric, at best, or anti-American, at worst.

While reading this book, I toyed with the idea of initiating a similar boycott. Sometimes the rush of how great this would be swept over me. Mostly though, I was beleaguered with images of how much it would impact my life to not buy anything for an entire year.

As timing would have it, I finished reading the book around the end of October, 2006. Typically I am close to finished with my Christmas shopping by then, but alas, this was not the case this year. Many factors contributed to the delinquency in my Christmas shopping, among them was losing my job in the end of October (more about that later). Being unemployed, my "normal" frantic gift giving spree had to be scaled back. Scaling back in terms of money is almost synonymous with buying goods made in other countries, most notably third world countries. Doing so often allows us to purchase more stuff than we might have originally intended; and as most of us have had drilled into our heads as small children, more stuff equals more power, more respect, more rights and freedoms, more reasons to be popular and envied.

As I schlepped out to the stores in the frigid Windy City where I currently live, I was less than pleased to be buying gifts for my loved ones and often I was just as bitter and resentful as Levine was. I crafted elaborate plans around shopping...I thought of avoiding the issue altogether by accidentally sleeping through Christmas,or, giving handmade gifts to everyone; after all I'm unemployed so in theory I have the time. I staged eloquent scripts in the theater of my mind where I brought friends and family to tears with selfless (and sometimes selfish) reasons why we couldn't exchange gifts this year. I even invented creative lies. In the end though, I pissed and moaned while waiting on endless lines to buy "the perfect gift for the perfect someone" and I loathed almost every minute of the experience!

I'm not so sure that this boycott would have come to fruition if it weren't for the frustrations of Christmas shopping. "Timing," I've often heard people quip, "is everything!" Since I had so much time on my hands, I could afford to peruse the clearance racks (my best department store friends). I had time to debate the merits of what I was buying and make impulse purchases, analyze them three times and return any inferior purchase at my leisure. In many ways, this time on my hands was also my downfall.

Time on my hands meant I could scrutinize everything I bought, everything I thought about buying, every penny I spent. Time on my hands meant I could flip over a package or two, lift up the clothing labels, peer behind the shimmery gloss of new packaging and inquire about the origins of my new "perfect gift". Initially I thought this would be fun. Of course it was a fluke that almost everything I purchased was made in China. After all, I started shopping for my nephews first since they are so darn cute, and everyone knows baby stuff comes from China, I mean, where else would it come from?? Besides, most of the stuff I bought the kids came from the clearance sections of Target. I'm not so sure I analyzed the meaning behind that.

As I continued to purchase and return gifts, I started to notice a disconcerting trend, and no, it was not the sheer amount of gifts I was buying despite my lack of employment that bothered me, that feeling came later. The trend I noticed was that everything I was buying was cheap, both in relative quality and cost as well as made in a third world country. I began to have images in my head of children no older than my nephews making this trinkets, these soon to be forgotten about "perfect gifts". I was unsettled and growing increasingly disgruntled with the whole Christmas fiasco. A storm was brewing....