The Plum Carrot

Alas, the holidays have arrived! A time of good cheer, merriment, and decorations and gift-giving. Lots of decorations and gift-giving. And Black Friday and holiday sales too. Don’t forget Black Friday and the holiday sales.

First up: Black Friday + Sales

My friend just showed me an advertisement in French about Black Friday today (I’ll see if I can get the link and post it), emphatically saying something like, “Support the rebellion. Don’t participate in Black Friday!”

The picture was a cartoon man sitting on a pile of wasted junk.
Sad thing is, the picture is very real and very true.

The holidays, a time for festivities and merriment, have evolved into a decorating and purchasing bonanza, and the world’s ever-increasing capitalist way of business has worked very efficienly to fuel this purchasing craze.

So very many stores have the predicament of ending the year in the black and must do so by increasing purchases. How? By posting ginormous sales just so they can hopefully make money and get rid of their stuff. And it works! People buy things that they don’t need just because it’s so cheap. It’s the stimulation of that survival-of-the-fittest-gene, necessary when we were in a period when whoever gathered the most hay for warmth survived bitter-cold night. Same thing applies here…kind of. The person who buys the most sweaters and iPhones on Black Friday will indubitably have the upper-hand in suriving a freezing night… during the middle of their summer in sunny Florida… in the middle of the forest… where there is no reception…. And then all this stuff will just make their way to the garage and sit there for the next 20 years until the next summer trip into the Florida forest that will require 23 sweaters of assorted sizes and several outdated iPhones. See what I mean?

I’m not saying it’s bad to look for a bargain, but purchasing multitudes of stuff because it’s cheap just sets the world back– we continue to promote greed and maintain this wasteful system of using tantamount amounts of natural resources to stock up on products which almost always have to be purged through end-of-year dirt-cheap sales in hopes of profit and then end up sitting, useless, in garages and dumpsters. This system does not promote a fair economy, society, or environment.

Next up: De(orating and Gift-GiVing

Now let’s tie in this purchasing craze into the decorations and gift-giving that are so ubiquitious with the holidays (did I use that word correctly?).

It’s Thanksgiving and you just have to dress your house up for the holiday. You’ve just spotted that wonderfully-colored artificial garland on sale that would look great hanging over your doorway. Since they’re on sale, grab some extra! We’ll find a use for it somewhere. And oh! those flavor-scented candles on sale–4 for $2; what a steal! Let’s grab 12 of those! Some plastic squashes and pumpkins were also discounted in the craft store this Saturday, and they’d look great strewn all over the table, right around the turkey. As a bonus, your thrifty self excidedly thinks, they won’t rot away; you can keep these here squashes year after year.

See, the convneience, visual appeal (smell-sual appeal, in the case of candles-haha), and very importantly, the cost of things deeply affect what, why and how much we purchase.

In the self interest of making our own holiday great and in the whirlwind of rushing and trying to be economical, we often get obsessed and really wacky with how much we can get for our buck and pile stuff on. We neglect to think of the effect our purchase has on society and the environment. What happens if those non-rottable palstic squashes crack and you throw them away and they roll out of the dump truck into the ocean to Indonesia and leach their poisons in such an already impoverished place. Kind of far-feched, but the effects of simply binge- buying and wasting are very much the same, only closer to home.

Gift-giving has also morphed into a very similar process.

The holidays have turned into a purchasing fest when giving gifts with meaning has sadly, lost its meaning. Let’s load our houses and children and relatives and friends with temporary toys or things that have no use because, well, it’s a time to give stuff. Industries have noticed and now monopolize this time of the year with millions of items in catalogs and lots of promotions.

So people buy and buy to give and give without thought about the recipient or the environment.

And what about all that wrapping paper?

My point is, the holidays have become a time of crazed buying-the same friend that showed me the French cartoon said her brother bought all these tools at a Black Friday sale and still hasn’t used them all-and is a time when companies now dish out tons of stuff to be sold for profit. Plastic trinkets dot catalogs. It’s become wasteful and takes a big toll on the environment.

So here’s what: I think that the holidays should be great–for everybody and everything, especially the environment. We should work to incorporate consciousness–for society and those in need and the planet–into this time of cheer and giving. Let’s work towards not getting so materialistic and getting a bit less wasteful. Let’s decorate and give with a world-wide, planet-wide view.

I’ll be following this post up with ways to get your green on this season–it’ll be great. In fact, this will be my first holiday that I really try to make green. I hope this will motivate you to really get involved in making this planet a better place to spend the holidays.

Let’s work towards bringing back the real meaning of this season. And let’s make it green!!!