Many of us are in the post-holiday, consumption-glut coma. Each year we swear that the next will be different. But each year we repeat a similar pattern:

Frantic buzzing from store to store via foot or finger (world wide web) searching for that perfect gift for each person on our list without busting our budget. Then Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa (insert holiday here) arrives, wrapping paper flies about and we are left with a small pile of more stuff to call our own.

Then commences the inevitable sense of disappointment – the void that enters when we sense the holiday’s end. Finding myself in this state once again, I began to wonder, really wonder, if it was worth it.

When I was younger and several notches higher on the idealistic scale, I announced a “non-material holiday season” with the zeal only naïve youth can muster. In the end, this failed with miserable a miserable putter. It turned out that people had a need to give things as much as we wanted to receive them. By the next year, tail between my legs, armed with wrapped packages I dutifully added to each person’s new pile of stuff while gaining my own – mouth shut.

But I think I sense a turning point and my bruised idealistic younger self dares emit a celebratory yelp. With the surge of everything “green” from home building to beer making, it was an inevitable progression to consumption itself. Many critics are even questioning the corporate capitalization on the new green frenzy. They are leery of just shifting the ravenous consumption of stuff instead of actually stanching the appetite altogether.

And then there’s Buy(less) Crap. Aaah…finally a catchy campaign after my own heart. With it’s punchy, unapologetic marketing it hits at the exact cross-section between being good to the earth and being good to your fellow human beings. If I knew who did this, I’d probably kiss them.

It’s not about buying more, it’s about giving more. Brilliant! Maybe there is a non-material holiday in my future after all…