The Christmas music is now playing in stores and many are on their way toward maxing out their credit cards in celebration of Christmas.
Over at Atrios Kate comments as follows.
"If people whine and complain because you're not going to give them expensive junk for Christmas, just ask them whose birthday it is they think they're celebrating. Ask them what they think HE would want them to give to others, and what they should hope to receive."
I prefer to buy locally and support independent retailers and their families or buy from socially responsible companies, at least not from those who you know are guilty as hell ( Walmart/Sams ).
Some online sites to get you started.
http://www.responsibleshopper.org/
http://www.greenpages.org/
http://www.americanapparel.net
http://www.sweatshops.org/
http://www.nosweatapparel.com/index.html
http://www.boycottbush.net/
Some blog postings:
All I Want for Xmas Is Fair and Verifiable Elections>
I'm not going to be buying Xmas stuff and I'm not going to be charging Xmas stuff until this country has a system in place that ensures fair and verifiable elections. Reader Kate has done the research and discovered that The National Retail Federation "is the world's largest retail trade association . . . ." Write to Their Vice President for Legislative and Political Affairs, Katherine Lugar. Here's her contact info:
National Retail Federation
325 7th Street, N.W.
Suite 1100
Washington, D.C. 20004
Phone: 1-800-NRF-HOW2
Fax (202) 727-2849
Let the holiday shopping season begin!
For better or worse we're a consumer-based economy and much of that is based on how strong the holiday shopping season runs. The best impact we can have is not through starving the beast (because it will cannibalize us first); it's through determining on whom we spend our money.
Small businesses are our friends.
Christmas Presents: The Sacred and the Profane
And when I think of Jesus, I ask myself: What would Jesus think of Walmart? What would Jesus think of funding pollution in honor of his birthday? What would Jesus think of the rise of the corporate state? Of the merging of Money and the Temple, the sacred and the profane? Oh, wait, pretty sure he said something about that once...