Friday 27 November 2015
"Ethical Santa" ends another year of consuming
A "non-traditional" Santa's hand is in the air as he greets "green" consumers in Denmark. But prhaps what he should be doing is raising his hand to say Stop, as in "Stop buying".
The Santa that most Santa-lovers love these days was invented in the nineteenth century, largely as a device to encourage shopping. In other words, the Santa we know is a commercial salesman and what he is selling is a consumerist winter. That there is now a multitude of choices, if you have money, for making your gift-giving spree "green" or "ethical" blindly ignores the fact that buying for buying's sake is the problem, not the colour of what you buy. Check out www.enough.org.uk to strengthen your anti-consumerist resolve. Think of the buy less message as coming from a Santa in an old hat he's keeping for another year (whether red or green doesn't matter at all) who has saved at least a few more carbon molecules from warming our atmosphere unnecessarily.
The Santa that most Santa-lovers love these days was invented in the nineteenth century, largely as a device to encourage shopping. In other words, the Santa we know is a commercial salesman and what he is selling is a consumerist winter. That there is now a multitude of choices, if you have money, for making your gift-giving spree "green" or "ethical" blindly ignores the fact that buying for buying's sake is the problem, not the colour of what you buy. Check out www.enough.org.uk to strengthen your anti-consumerist resolve. Think of the buy less message as coming from a Santa in an old hat he's keeping for another year (whether red or green doesn't matter at all) who has saved at least a few more carbon molecules from warming our atmosphere unnecessarily.
# posted by Taodhg @ 12:53 pm 
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Let's make so-called Black Friday Buy Nothing Day! Or better yet, Black Bloc Friday!
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: Saturday, November 28, 2015 12:53:00 pm
: Saturday, November 28, 2015 12:53:00 pm << Home
