Buy Nothing Day is an international day of protest against consumerism. It was founded by Vancouver artist Ted Dave and subsequently promoted by Adbusters magazine, based in Canada.
It is typically celebrated the Friday after American Thanksgiving in North America and the following day internationally.
The first Buy Nothing Day was organized in Vancouver in September 1992 "as a day for society to examine the issue of over-consumption." In 1997, it was moved to the Friday after American Thanksgiving, also called "Black Friday", which is one of the 10 busiest shopping days in the United States.
Despite controversies, Adbusters managed to advertise Buy Nothing Day on CNN, but many other major television networks declined to air their ads.
Critics of the BND state that Buy Nothing Day simply causes participants to buy their goods the next day. Adbusters states that it "isn't just about changing your habits for one day" but "about starting a lasting lifestyle commitment to consuming less and producing less waste."
Buy Nothing Day has been criticized by some groups as a consumer-oriented empowerment activity that is insulting to those who simply cannot afford to buy anything at all, and that it is based on inaction rather than more productive action. A group in Montreal promoted "Steal Something Day" as an alternative. In their words, "The geniuses at Adbusters have managed to create the perfect feel-good, liberal, middle-class activist non-happening. A day when the more money you make, the more influence you have (like every other day). A day which, by definition, is insulting to the millions of people worldwide who are too poor or marginalized to be considered "consumers.""
From Buy Noting Day similar events were derived, like Buy Nothing Christmas. This started unofficially in 1968, when Ellie Clark and her family decided to publicly disregard the commercial aspects of the Christmas holiday. Contemporarily a movement was created to extend Adbusters' Buy Nothing Day into the entire Christmas season. Buy Nothing Christmas first became official in 2001 when a small group of Canadian Mennonites created a website and gave the movement a name.
Today, participation includes more than 65 nations.
