Today my kids and I have a tradition of not shopping.
Its not that we don’t buy gifts. We do. We try to make gifts, mostly, but we are capitalists and we like presents too. But today, we stay home.
Sometimes we bake or decorate or do projects on the house. We are lucky enough to not have to show up to the mall for a retail job, or to have to plow the roads all night or to have to ring up booze at the liquor store for all the folks trying to recover from the political conversations they waded into yesterday. Oops. (Although two out of three of us are actually working today on side-hustles to make ends meet.)
This year I didn’t pick fruit. I didn’t even go mushroom hunting! I don’t have any preserves or dried mushrooms or chokecherry syrup to share with the family. But I went to the library and got some ideas and this weekend I will be making some easy, low-cost gifts to share with my friends and family. The teenagers help. And it all sounds very Little House on the Prairie and occasionally it is. But we are Americans too. We fight and buy too much and overeat and all the things.
But today, on our annual Buy Nothing Day, we do enjoy being together. I am so lucky these crazy kids go along with my hippie-dippie ideas even now that they are 18.
So, don’t buy a subscription today. But if you share this song I would love it!
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