Buy Nothing Day

Tomorrow is International Buy Nothing Day – an annual event to expose the wickedness of consumerism. Wouldn’t you know that two of the three churches I serve are having Christmas fairs tomorrow? Rather like the way we protest against Sunday trading but have church bookstalls or fair trade stalls on a Sunday. Or more seriously, like the way too much of church culture bows down at the idol of consumerism. Christian retailers speak of ‘product’. I once saw a bookseller advertise ‘this indispensable book’ – and it wasn’t the Bible. We are dreadfully compromised.