Who would have ever thought Christmas shopping was an act of kindness?
” Some Americans have taken kindly to the idea. One November shopping mission to New York, billed as “economic patriotism,” rallied 5,000 people from 173 cities to buy everything from watches to fancy dinners in the Big Apple. Oregon sent 1,000 “flight for freedom” shoppers to New York for five days in October. Santa Barbara, Calif., sent its own delegation of splurging missionaries after Thanksgiving, as did Canada, under the stated auspices that both places love New York. But not everyone is sold on the notion of consumption as virtue, even in a consumer-driven economy of interdependence. Americans have long considered gift-giving to be almost a matter of religious duty at Christmas, and now some deplore efforts to make it a patriotic duty as well. “The whole argument illustrates our level of servitude to the consumer economy that we have built,” says Bill McKibben, author of “Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case for a More Joyful Christmas.” If helping one’s neighbor is an offshoot of i
