If we all buy nothing this Christmas, won’t a lot of people lose their jobs?

Yes, and now we’re getting close to the core reasons for why Buy Nothing Christmas is necessary in the first place: Our economy is based on a consumer-driven capitalism. And because it’s the only economy we have right now, if we stop shopping we stop the economy. Hence we had President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien telling citizens to get on with their lives after the September 11 terrorist attacks and shop. But there are pitfalls of our current economic system: We work too hard to save money to buy things we don’t really need, we buy into a standard of living that that reinforces the gap between the rich and poor, and we ruin the earth to a point where we’ll eventually all lose our jobs anyway.

from the FAQ on How to Have a Buy-Nothing-Christmas