Don’t get me wrong. I love to shop and I love a good bargain. But I think that before the buying frenzy takes over, maybe people should stop and think about where their money is going and whether or not buying that extra scented candle is really necessary. Wouldn’t it be nice if instead of fighting the other million shoppers at sprawlmart, they stayed home, had a cup of coffee, and wrote a check to the charity of their choice or just called a friend that they hadn’t talked to in a while?

It’s not a judgement on your grandma if someone is choosing to participate in Buy Nothing Day, or even to criticize the buying orgy that occurs on Black Friday. Most people don’t even stop for a moment to think about the icky side of post-Thanksgiving shopping, to think about how much we have when others (including most of the people who make the stuff we buy) have so little. To me, if there is a point to Buy Nothing Day it is largely just to get “normal people” to give those things a moment’s consideration even if they do end up going shopping anyways.

Regarding your statement about the “If there is societal pressure to do X, I must perform the opposite of X!” thing. I think that’s a pretty simplistic / pointlessly insulting way of looking at another viewpoint. Some people may do “rebellious” things out of perversity, but others have better reasons. Just as some people might do more “normal” things because they’re mindless conformists, while other people do them because they’ve made an intentional decision for good reasons. There’s also the danger of reacting to reactionaries–if you get steamed thinking about what you see as knee-jerk rebellion, so you endorse the “normal” thing with a vengeance, you’re being reactionary too.