From Cana­di­an Men­non­ites comes “BuyNothingChristmas.org”:http://www.buynothingchristmas.org/

bq. _Buy Noth­ing Christ­mas is a stress-reliever, and more peo­ple need to hear about it. You can change your world by sim­ply putting up one of these posters (or make your own) in your church, place of wor­ship, home or work. Be sneaky about it if you have to. The point is to get peo­ple think­ing. It’s an idea whose time has come, so get out there and make a difference!_
It’s a great idea. Friends tra­di­tion­al­ly did­n’t even rec­og­nize Christ­mas and kept their schools and shops open on Decem­ber 25. I remem­ber being stunned when I first learned about this, but it’s a very pow­er­ful way to state the core Quak­er belief that all days and all peo­ple and all moments are equal­ly wor­thy to God. It’s about being plain and hon­est and pre­sent­ing the same care and atten­tion and appear­ance at all times.
These beliefs were expressed through oth­er Quak­er pecu­liar­i­ties: Friends wore plain dress for all occa­sions, think­ing it was dis­hon­est to dress one way for one type of event and anoth­er way for a dif­fer­ent type. Friends did away with hag­gling over the prices of goods, think­ing a flat price was the most fair. Friends fore­bade swear­ing on God or the Bible, it implied a double-standard of truth­ful­ness. (“Matthew 5:34 – 37”:http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&passage=matthew+5%3A34-37&version=KJV).
Christ­mas is a dif­fi­cult time for believ­ers today. Every year war-making politi­cians make pious speech­es about peace on earth. Har­ried par­ents run around cre­ation buy­ing the right crap­py toy for their kids (when what the kid prob­a­bly wants is less run­ning around and more atten­tion). Quak­ers don’t real­ly have a cor­po­rate stand on any of this any­more. Most Meet­ings have events relat­ed to Christ­mas, some even bring in trees and oth­er idols. I usu­al­ly enjoy the Christ­mas par­ties, they mix us up and I have con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple I don’t talk to enough dur­ing our reg­u­lar Sun­day morn­ing 11 – 12 timeslot.
Thanks to “Gutlesspacifist”:www.gutlesspacifist.com/archives/00000516.htm for his post on BuyNothingChristmas.