Occupy Christmas and buy nothing today? Not this year.

I appreciate the sentiment.  Yes, Christmas has become too commercial.  We all agree.  This, however, is the wrong year to be telling people not to shop.  We need people shopping, a lot,  or we're going to be in this economic rut for many years to come.

Now, as for taking the Occupy Wall Street movement and making it about Christmas and consumerism.  Maybe.  I'm really divided about making OccupyWall Street an omnibus protests for [insert cause here].  At some point it starts to feel very "Free Mumia Jamal" to me (the way practically every single liberal march in the 1990s just had to have a contingent of people carrying "Free Mumia Jamal" signs, even though that cause had nothing to do with the march in question).  Sometimes, even were the ancillary cause just, it comes off as a bit weird invoking it in an entirely unrelated march (e.g., carrying "global warming" signs at a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rally).

Occupy Wall Street is doing pretty good on its own.  Don't ruin things.  And in any case, we seriously need to people to shop - consumer spending makes up a huge percentage of the economy (70%).  I'm sorry, but the last thing we need right now is for people to cut back even further.  That's what the Republicans are proposing, and they're wrong.