Conspiring against Consumerism this Advent

Simon Barrow has posted more about Advent. This time he is talking about Advent Conspiracy.
This encourages us to ceebrate Advent with compassion rather than a bout of excessive consumerism.

The website seems to be trying to raise awareness of the great need in the world and to encourage us to help those in need this Christmas rather than merely indulge our greed and the greed of our friends and family. Their particular focus seems to be on clean water projects.

So while I think the idea is basically good, I find it a bit narrow and so likely to be limited in its appeal.

Simon Barrow seems to have extracted the nugget of a more generally helpful idea from all this for those who want to make Advent, Christmas and the rest of the year more in line with Jesus' radical message:

The distinctive element on this, it might be said, is deliberately counterposing worship to consumption. That is, the activity of receiving the world as creative gift for all in need, in contradistinction to turning the world into a sellable commodity for those with purchasing power.

In other words let us wonder at the wonderful world around us and all that we already have this Advent, so that we find ourselves sated with good things and, as a result, less hungry for the tinsel and tat and 'must have' gadget we had no idea we needed until now, which the retailers try to persuade us we want to buy.

Simon Barrow on Advent hope

In post-Christendom* the inbuilt captivity of the wider social order to received Christian ideas is being steadily eroded, and the answer is not to reassert control (the Gospel is about gracious possibility, which is destroyed by compulsion), but to ask whether it is really much better in the church.

Practices of hopeful waiting - spiritual, intellectual and subversively political - need to be rediscovered in such a way that they really can be seen to 'make a difference' in public life.

It is the quality of compassionate living which communicates Advent hope, not rhetoric buttressed by guilt or divorced from costly engagement. By contrast, complaining about the loss of a 'Christian country' is the easy option: at best a distraction, at worst a trip in the wrong direction.

(Simon's links, but my highlighting in mauve)

Read the whole post here

* 'Post-Christendom' is our modern society, where going to church is no longer part of the general culture and something we need to do in order to be an accepted member of society.

Why Peace Oil is not such a Good Gift

Mark Tran reports on a charity under fire for marketing an Israeli olive oil at the expense of Palestinian products

Peace Oil, an olive oil made in Israel by Jews and Arabs, would seem an ideal Christmas gift for those wishing to take a stand against consumerism.

The oil is one of the products promoted in the Good Gifts catalogue, run by the Charities Advisory Trust (CAT), an organisation founded by Hilary Blume and widely respected for advising charities on ethical ways of generating funds.

The blurb on the Peace Oil website claims the product encourages cooperation between communities. By helping to market the olive oil, CAT hopes to bring economic prosperity to such enterprises, thereby encouraging others.

Despite its laudable intentions, however, CAT has come under fire from those who claim it is undermining products made by Palestinians and brought into Britain by cooperatives such as Zaytoun.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, the UK branch of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and the Inter-Faith Group for Morally Responsible Investment, have written to church and charity groups urging them to promote Palestinian olive oil rather than Peace Oil.

Continue reading for the true story of Peace oil.