I have been thinking about shopping lately, especially as the holiday advertising campaigns are beginning in earnest. The madness that is Black Friday (which is now bleeding into Thanksgiving Day) is fresh in my mind. I happen to think it’s an ugly development in our culture.
Why do we care so much about buying stuff? Like most Americans, I am a consumer–but I am not proud of it. I try to resist, but I think that materialism surrounds us like water surrounds a fish… we don’t even recognize it anymore. We have to consume or die, like sharks need to keep swimming. I don’t think we were created for this.
This is excerpted from “The seduction of things,” written by Kate Sprutta Elliott that appeared on the Women of the ELCA blog on December 2, 2013. Read this and another blog post, “When shopping is the season,” on this day, Black Friday as many know it.
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