Dear Corporate America, I'm not buying into holiday consumerism | Voices of Faith
Dear Corporate America,
The holidays are here once again and your glitzy, glamorous ads are encouraging me to consume and consume and consume. I am being overwhelmed with reminders that I need to show my love for others by purchasing expensive gifts. But your endless ads are not working the way you want them to.
Instead, I am being reminded in this holy season that I am called to live a simpler, more loving, more grateful life. Thank you for helping me remember what really matters- my relationships with others, my connections with this beautiful fragile world and everything in it, and the radical idea that the best things in life are free.
I regret to inform you that instead of buying more gifts and spending more money, I'm going to spend a little bit more time with friends and family, practice a little bit more gratitude, love the earth a little bit more, and give a little bit more of myself to make this a better world.
Sincerely, Steven
P.S. I'm staying home on Black Friday!
In my letter to corporate America, I was quite serious about the endless ads. Through various types of media, people see an average of 16,000 brand-name logos every day. In the course of an average lifetime, the American who watches television 26 hours a week will have watched three solid years of advertising.
There’s a lot riding on those ads. Two thirds of the American economy is consumer driven. You and I are told that we can buy happiness, but it’s never clear about when we will achieve it. Instead, ads seem to create a vague restlessness that suggests that happiness is always just around the corner and will come with the bigger house, the latest Transformer toys, the tricked out car, the Blackberry thingie that does everything except cook dinner, the luxury cruise in the Mediterranean, the Starbucks super ultimate grand latte and so on. If we buy into this false faith of consumerism, we become nothing more than our possessions and our purchasing power.
Is this who we are meant to be? Can we really buy identity, purpose and meaning at the Mall of America? Our material culture may say yes, but my Unitarian Universalist faith says no. This faith teaches that true joy and happiness are found in doing those things that make us more human.
William Murry, a UU Humanist, writes in his book "Reason and Reverence" that “becoming more fully human involves the transformation of the mind and heart from self-centeredness to a sense of one’s self as part of a larger sacred whole and a deep commitment to the human and natural worlds. It is about the transformation from a shallow life of fear, greed, hedonism, and materialism to a meaningful life of love and caring, gratitude and generosity, fairness and equity, joy and hope, and a profound respect for others.”
Such a transformation takes time and never happens overnight, unless, of course, you're Ebenezer Scrooge. Becoming more fully human is a lifetime's work, happening sometimes in major ways as we experience a huge transition in our lives but more typically happening in small ways as life presents opportunities every moment and every day for every one of us to be just a little bit more grateful. A little bit more generous. To care just a little bit more for the earth. To love just a little bit more. To spend just a little bit more time with our family and friends. And what better time to begin doing just a little bit more of these things than during the holidays?
As we prepare to celebrate the holidays, however we may choose to do so, imagine the difference it could make in our world if we turned off the TV and the ads and instead turned our hearts and our lives toward practicing just a little bit more love, a little bit more hope, a little bit more gratitude. Imagine how all these little bits could add up in a way that brings the world even a little bit closer to the beloved community, where everyone knows justice and peace, freedom from fear and oppression, and we all share the goodness and abundance of life.
The Rev. Steven Protzman is a religious naturalist humanist and the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kent, Ohio, a congregation whose mission is to inspire love, seek justice, and grow in community
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Here's why I'm not buying into holiday consumerism | Voices of Faith