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President Bush's Last Thanksgiving Address and Obama Interview with Barbara Walters
We live in a propitious time: times are hard and getting harder...but we still control our destiny, we still have each other, we still can choose how to live. Daniel Schultz: Sharing our thanks and our plenty
Yet at our annual Thanksgiving Eve service tonight, we will thank God for our good fortune with full and grateful hearts.
We'll give thanks, too, for the ability to collect donations of food and money for grocery store gift certificates. Nobody in our congregation - hopefully no one in our neighborhood - will have to go hungry. That's a blessing.
But as we offer up thanks and praise and foodstuffs this evening, I hope that we will take a moment to consider that it doesn't have to be this way.
Don't get me wrong: Charity is a wonderful thing. But why must our economy be geared such that it produces a few winners and many losers?
We didn't have to come to this pass, after all. We chose the path to perdition, following the logic that lust for material things is good, that consumption rewards (and drives) success. Meanwhile, the consequences for neighbors and the Earth's scarce resources are what economists call "externalities," costs that need not be calculated.
It's not just the housing bubble bursting or the oil economy staggering under the weight of demand or the credit markets collapsing. It's all of it, the entire wicked assumption that we deserve to have everything we want while others go without.
The good news is the choices we made to get ourselves here are just that: choices. No law says we must live extravagantly. No rule I am aware of prevents us from living a grateful life.
But don't let the realities of economic hardship take the fun out of the holidays. We need the holidays. We need to celebrate with friends even more than we need to consume and buy stuff. Judith Levine: An alternative to shopping frenzy
Relax. People can learn to live with less — happily. I know. A few years ago my partner, Paul, and I spent a whole year not shopping. We bought nothing but necessities: basic groceries, Internet access. We forwent clothes, books, CDs, movies, restaurant meals.
The good news is, a little moderation can bring a lot of cheer.
The Year Without Shopping occurred to me at Christmastime. I'm a secular Jew, but I'd scattered $1,001 on gifts and holiday odds and ends. As my credit line grew smaller and my shopping bags heavier, I envisioned their contents, along with those of a nation, disliked and discarded — and moldering in landfills forever.
I decided to investigate the connection between the personal activity of shopping and the global problem of overconsumption. I figured that the best way to understand the draw of the marketplace would be to quit it altogether, then see how that felt. I knew that my no-shopping budget would be on Mother Earth's side. Which side would the macroeconomy eventually be on? Today it's clearer than ever that we'll have to worry about that sooner rather than later.
During our cold-turkey year, I was sometimes bored. British psychotherapist Adam Phillips calls boredom the restless state of waiting to desire. Consumption gives us myriad names for inchoate desire — and ready objects to allay it. Take away shopping, and you're left with the restlessness.
When we couldn't go out for a beer or a meal with friends, Paul and I felt lonely. When others talked about the latest movies, we sat dumb. In a consumer society, much of our social, cultural and political lives — even our identities — are cobbled together from the things and experiences we purchase.
Not shopping, we devoted more time to activism and more money to causes. I paid off an $8,000 credit card debt without really trying and haven't run it up again. I still shop less than I did. And on more or less the same income, I give away much more money than I used to.
The hiatus reminded me how sweet it is to take home the perfect pair of trousers or sit in a cafe watching the world. Unless you're a monk, material abstinence does not magnify the spirit. Still, compared either to consumption or abstention, the best soul-grower is social connection.
Which brings me back to the holidays.
What about gifts and parties? Were we going to impose our skinflintery on our loved ones? Did we have to beg off fireside get-togethers just to avoid bringing a box of chocolates?
We relish lighting up the dark days with giving. But how could we give without getting and spending? How could we celebrate without adding to the global litter?
I got a clue from the past. The midwinter holidays originate in pagan rites to seduce the sun back from the underworld. Doing that requires excess — gorging, reveling and giving.
In this spirit, Paul and I throw an annual Hanukkah Latke Bash, the no-shopping year not excepted. We load the table with potato pancakes, vats of sour cream and homemade applesauce, and plates of smoked fish. Our guests arrive with libations and load their plates. Our feast is cheap — basically the food of the shtetl. And all that's left in the end is (compostable) bones.
"You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough," wrote Blake. Now think celebration, not shopping. Because in spite — no, because — of the economic gloom, it is our duty, and can be our pleasure, to make the season as festive today as in the fattest times.
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