Christmas; a time for giving and kindness... or.. errr, not? Black Friday marks the start of the Christmas shopping period and is unfortunately a somewhat terrifying, opportunistic, self gain initiative that fuels our throwaway culture, and is frankly quite shameful. We could all think of a million other more worthy, relevant causes on our doorsteps worldwide that could really benefit from this absurd amount of publicity, attention, focus, energy and money. So why don’t we?
Nothing says First World madness like Black Friday, a term originally created by Philadelphia police officers who couldn’t properly do their jobs the day after Thanksgiving and were forced to deal with flocks of people invading the city in order to watch the annual Army-Navy football game. So what did our consumeristic society turn this into? A global shopping spree that makes us all go nuts. Genius!
Reversing the trend possible, and also necessary if we want to contribute to the war against senseless mass production and endless waste that is destroying the planet.
Do we really need another piece of plastic in our homes?
Must we really buy something only because it’s cheap?
Is it really worth our while spending a day fighting over poorly made items of clothing? Surely we can do better than that?!
Let’s all stop to consider how much energy (artificial and natural) has been spent and will be spent on that day in order to allow us, the privileged, to purchase ‘things’ that we don’t really need.
Meaningful alternatives are within reach and will leave us satisfied and surely happier than another object we have been fooled to be believe we need. And now.
There are endless worthy, important, support needing causes on our doorsteps, all over the world.
We would like to instigate a thoughtful, kind and inspiring focus to this shopping period in the lead up to Christmas, seeing all brands taking part in donating something, anything, to someone or something less fortunate and show our human and community spirit. We should be promoting kindness, peace and compassion, not greed, self gain and disregard for our environment.
It’s cold out there. Really really cold. And so many, for so many different reasons, are sleeping rough, on the streets, without a warm home to call theirs.
One day, reading through some articles, we discovered that one of the most needed and least donated garments to homeless people, are warm, thick socks. And this got us thinking…
We won't be taking part.
Instead we will donate 20% of all orders made from Friday 24th to Monday 27th November, to buying warm socks and sanitary products, and, through awesome group Streets Kitchen, will get them to where they are needed.
A little can go a long way! We should all do our bit, whatever we can, to help those around us.
We in the First World pride ourselves with words like civilisation, democracy and culture but more often than not we forget all of our values in the name of the latest trend or the overrated, useless object, ending up exploiting natural resources, damaging and hurting people in less fortunate countries and not taking care of each other.
This year we can start changing the future.
Let’s change Black Friday. Let’s make it colourful. Meaningful, kind and inspiring.
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