Stop holiday returns NOW! (ahhhh, ok…)

Johnny, your sarcasm was interesting. I don't get into the holidays and this Merchandise Day (December 25th) greed-fest. Many people buy all of this junk that they don't need and much of it will end up in already packed landfills. Most of it made in China or India. Buy, buy, buy. No thank you. Whenever I give gifts, it's always something I've personally made "from scratch" such as cookies, cupcakes or brownies (usually vegan).

Felices Fiestas.

Educate; Maybe some them will learn something and even do something

From a blog I found while searching for sweatshop images in Google

Chucks are hot. We all like them. But, do you really think about how they come to you? Maybe you should start. Converse are made by Nike. Stop supporting Nike and the sweatshops and slave-labor/child-labor. Buy with a conscience, buy from No Sweat. I do. I love my shoes. NO Sweat is unionized, vegan footwear with a heart (and other cool goodies too). I order mine from http://www.veganstore.com because I love the people there. They will take them back if they don't fit and send you new ones. The sizing is in UK sizes. They send you paperwork with the shoes that tells you the wages and benefits of each worker. They are the only unionized shoe maker. So, check them out!!!! Make your heart smile. Make your feet smile. Make the workers smile. :o)

I do not know if this action will help in any way, but it cannot hurt. The outrage we experience from November 25 to December 25 is best called The Money Season and celebrated by wasting the world's resources on things we do not need. We certainly would not hear anything about Christmas if it were not profitable, and that is all capitalism cares about: Maximization of profit. In every way we can, everyone should stop participating in this racket, if only to lower the tension as this hysteria over The Money Season is nauseating. This includes but is not limited to:
1. The entire gift exchange (people can buy their winter clothes as needed without the gift exchange);
2. The whole decoration racket especially the live tree inside a building, and it is usually near a doorway, drying out and becoming an increasing fire hazard with each passing day (the St. Francis Yacht Club burned down in December 1974 in a fire caused by an Xmas tree catching fire, killing 1 person);
3. Sending cards as it is a waste of time and money as if the recipient has no contact with you throughout the year, there is no point in sending a card to that person and if they have constant contact, they do not need a card;
4. All parties for The Money Season as they are often alcohol promoting occasions and most of us do not need the extra calories in food, and for businesses, the employer is just promoting the anti-labor lie that "we are all one big family" with the office party and if it is a profitable business, it is all a tax writeoff, meaning we workers pay the difference in taxes;
5. The whole food preparation fixation which is not only a burden to women who usually have to prepare this feast, in addition to doing the gift shopping, card mailing, tree and house decorating and working for a living 40 hours a week, but also promotes overeating in a society where most of us need to loose weight.

Having a paid day off from work for 12/25 and 1/1 is nice and should continue, but all the rest of it is insulting, hypocritical in a capitalist, warmongering society, aggravating, expensive and wasteful. We all can find something to do with these winter holidays (or summer if you are in Hawaii, Mexico, etc), above all rest. In the winter, all of this running around and often traveling long distances is very bad for one's health and a complete waste.

If you were to look a bit more deeply, all the dozens of saint's holidays and festivals were the way that catholics negotiated weekends and days off from the monarch or boss through a lot of history. Without offering a tactic for solving the paradox of overproduction of goods/services in the economy tensioned against a high unemployment rate which forces people to take any tiresome job they can find (by getting people's work hours reduced so that we produce exactly what we need), it feels like mocking working class as slobs for wanting stuff.

"The whole decoration racket especially the live tree inside a building..."

I agree. I did see far fewer trees on top of cars this year going to people's homes and the house across from me which usually has a tree inside doesn't this year. All of these trees being cut down for this silly holiday and turkeys and pigs being killed so that people can eat dead animals.

I do like some of the lights, mainly the LEDs which are beautiful and use very little energy. Many people decorate so predictably. Here in The City there's a run on sheep streaks. That's what I call them. That's where the sheep take their lights (usually the ubiquitous clear midget lights) and make a straight line with the lights on the top of their deck railing so from a distance one sees all of these straight lines all over the place from people's apartments and home decks. Not much creativity there. Anyone can attach lights to a deck, I suppose. Some creative person made a peace sign out of their purple LEDs. It was very pretty.