Buy Nothing Day

Buy Nothing Day
Buy Nothing Day demonstration in San Francisco, November 2000
Type	Cultural
Significance	Protest against consumerism
2016 date	November 24, 2017
2017 date	November 23, 2018
2018 date	November 29, 2019
Frequency	Annual
Related to	Black Friday (shopping), Thanksgiving

Buy Nothing Day (BND) is an international day of protest against consumerism. In North America, the United Kingdom, Finland and Sweden, Buy Nothing Day is held on the Friday after U.S. Thanksgiving, concurrent to Black Friday (on Friday); elsewhere, it is held the following day, which is the last Saturday in November. Buy Nothing Day was founded in Vancouver by artist Ted Dave and subsequently promoted by Adbusters magazine, based in Canada.

The first Buy Nothing Day was organized in Canada in September 1992 "as a day for society to examine the issue of over-consumption." In 1997, it was moved to the Friday after American Thanksgiving, also called "Black Friday", which is one of the ten busiest shopping days in the United States. In 2000, some advertisements by Adbusters promoting Buy Nothing Day were denied advertising time by almost all major television networks except for CNN. Soon, campaigns started appearing in the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Austria, Germany, New Zealand, Japan, the Netherlands, France, Norway and Sweden. Participation now includes more than 65 nations.

Various gatherings and forms of protest have been used on Buy Nothing Day to draw attention to the problem of over-consumption:

While critics of the day charge that Buy Nothing Day simply causes participants to buy the next day, Adbusters states that it "isn't just about changing your habits for one day" but "about starting a lasting lifestyle commitment to consuming less and producing less waste."

Other campaigns, such as Shift Your Shopping, attempt to redirect spending away from corporate chains and online giants toward locally owned, community-based businesses as a means to combat consumerism. Even some independent business advocates, such as the American Independent Business Alliance, recognize "Black Friday" frenzy does little for independent businesses and instead encourage people to consider giving gifts but not necessarily "things."

Adbusters in 2011 renamed the event Occupy Xmas, a reference to the Occupy Movement. Buy Nothing Day was first joined with Adbuster's Buy Nothing Christmas campaign. Shortly thereafter, Lauren Bercovitch, the production manager at Adbusters Media Foundation publicly embraced the principles of Occupy Xmas, advocating "something as simple as buying locally—going out and putting money into your local economy—or making your Christmas presents". Previously, the central message of Occupy X-mas and Occupy Christmas differed in that Occupy X-Mas called for a "buy nothing Christmas" and Occupy Christmas called for support of local economy, artists, and craftspeople in holiday shopping. The union of these ideologies calls for a Buy Nothing Day to kick off a season of supporting local economy and family.