Are Americans Becoming Less Acquisitive?

This holiday season of 2008, I've been struck by a theme in the images I see, a quite unusual theme for this time of year. As always I'll remember this holiday mostly for the precious time with my family, the jokes only we get and the silly laughs that follow. But other images this Christmas are not in keeping with a season so long associated with plenty: A lonely little robot on a dark planet buried in junk. An op-ed column with a vastly more serious message than 'yes Virginia.' And a Christmas Eve experience very different than one we had 20 years ago. I wonder if it's just me seeing a pattern where none exist, or if maybe it's a harbinger of change.

Twenty years ago on Christmas Eve, my husband and I coaxed our little boys into bed for an afternoon nap, not an easy thing to do after indulging in chocolates in a pre-Christmas frenzy. In the quiet that followed over a well-earned glass of eggnog, we opened an envelope from his parents. Out fluttered a check, a note and a cut-out picture of a children's rocking horse, the large kind that bounces on a spring. The note said 'please buy this for the boys for our Christmas gift to them.' Uh-oh; 2 pm on Christmas Eve and the last thing we wanted to do was brave hoards of last-minute shoppers. But his parents would be disappointed if they called on Christmas and didn't hear their grandsons exclaiming over the rocking horse so my husband abandoned his eggnog and went out to fight the crowds. And what crowds they were! In a few hours he'd returned, exhausted but jubilant with rocking horse in hand, and told of stores crammed from entrance to rear, of long lines at every cashier, and of a mad frantic jostle for final items when the store announced it was closing early.

Christmas Eve this year, and our now-grown sons had last-minute shopping, so off we went to the mall. On the way we joked about the insanity of this decision to shop on Christmas Eve, of what we were about to get ourselves into and how to keep our cool amid the frantic chaos to come. But... no. We parked right next to the main entrance in a nearly empty lot. No lines appeared at any cash register, and store employees stood bored and idle. Everything was deeply discounted, yet shelves sat fully stocked. The busiest place in the mall? The Santa court, where a weary looking Mr. Claus was counting the minutes until he was done posing with crying babies for the year.

I know this has not been a typical holiday. The country is mired in a severe recession, job cuts loom for many, and in all areas of our economy there's a palpable feeling of uncertainty and doubt. But I found myself wondering if something else was going on. Could it be that born-to-shop Americans were changing their ways? Are we actually becoming less interested in acquiring stuff?

In my 50+ years, western culture has been measured by consumption. We didn't start that fire; folks described by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens seemed to also measure everything by the yardstick of gain. Despite the cries from younger generations to change our ways, despite the popularity of beatniks, hippies and grunge, we didn't change-we continued to measure our status and our place in the world by how much we owned and how much it cost vs. how much everyone else owned and how much their stuff cost. I can't be judgmental, I'm a child of my time and my culture and I played the game too. I may have been more measured than most but I played it all the same. The rules were simple: The Smiths lived in the fancier house than the Franks, ergo they must be doing better. Jane drove a car that cost a lot more than Mary's so Jane must be much better off. Our clothes, our shoes, our watches, our electronics, they were pieces of the picture and that picture was our status. It was indeed a game and it was easy to figure out how to look like you were winning: you just bought more expensive stuff than the other guy.

But now it's all gone topsy turvey. Jane in the fancy car owes so much money she can't sleep at night, but Mary treats herself to nice restaurants occasionally. The Smith's owe more than the beautiful house is worth, while in the other neighborhood the Frank's owe little and took a two week vacation. Who's worth more? Who's doing better? And how do you measure who's winning if the whole game was built on a facade?

As I stood in the nearly empty mall on Christmas Eve and observed the lack of buying interest, I wondered if maybe the American way of measuring status by stuff and price tag is getting turned upside down. Just look at the stores; the stuff is better than ever and cheaper than it's been, so if the rules still applied this would be a great time to get ahead in the status game. But philosophers and religions have always tried to tell us that the road to happiness doesn't go through the retail store, and I wonder if now we're listening.

Two days later, a brilliant and simple op-ed in the New York Times jumped out at me, making me recall my Christmas Eve observations. Columnist Bob Herbert wrote that Americans need to start investing in things that matter in the long run and stop being so greedy for short-term gain. He entitled it Stop Being Stupid. We Americans, he said, have been living in a dream world:

We need to start living within our means and get past the nauseating idea that the essence of our culture and the be-all and end-all of the American economy is the limitless consumption of trashy consumer goods.

On Christmas night came an exclamation point to all this musing, a final in-your-face about what comes from living to acquire. My family watched Wall-E, the Pixar tale of a little robot left alone with a cockroach on a dark, depressing, junk-covered Earth. Earth was abandoned by humans because it was literally buried in stuff, mountains of stuff that reached higher than the skyscrapers. It was a sadly beautiful piece of filmmaking, and it accentuated everything I'd been thinking about. A world buried under fancy stuff, is that what our future looks like? Is that what we want our future to look like? If buying is how we define ourselves, then what do we ultimately end up with? When will we finally say 'enough?'

Maybe we get it. Maybe we really are becoming less acquisitive. Maybe we'll curb our greed and buy what we need with money we really have. Or maybe we're just pausing and catching our collective breath before returning to our American way of buy buy buy, buy buy some more.

I wonder.

Comments

[Marlene H. Phillips - Huffpost Blogger]

You are absolutely right, Dogyeller. We've built our economy on a false model-the more more more as you said- and in order to get out of this mess we have to fundamentally change the way we think and act. I hope you read the Bob Herbert editorial; his clarion call to 'invest in America' is not the same as 'buy American.' He wants to see us put our money toward what matters in the long run-education, mass transit, infrastructure, healthcare.

[ColoradoJake]

Ummmm...

This has nothing to do with "Americans" becoming less materialistic... It's the BABY BOOMER generation that is now old and has retired from shopping. And do you think we "X-ers" will be there lined up at the Wal-Mart doors at 5am with our credit cards in hand ready to trample the poor soul who has to open the door? HE.LL NO!

I watched my parents try to have better stuff than the Smiths and the Franks and the Joneses. And what a sad, little pathetic life it was.

Do you want to know what my "status symbols" are?

S/He who has the smallest carbon footprint. S/He who makes the most with the least. S/He who lives in the world instead of simply on it. S/He who buys the least amount of plastic sh*t from China. They are the ones who win.

[Marlene H. Phillips - Huffpost Blogger]

Well said, ColoradoJake. I hope this is finally the time that things change, and that it's your generation that insists that it does. But please remember you're not the first; when I was young we were proudly and unequivocally anti-establishment, we were going to change the consumer culture and live in a sustainable, ecologically respectful way. Some baby boomers (and it's hard for me to claim them as my own, since I'm on the younger end of that demographic) did change the way the world works; they head up the environmental agencies and non profits that have made the world a better place. My greatest hope is that the x and y generations demand that the world change even more.
One last observation: boomers aren't lining up at Wal Mart at 5 am. I'm afraid we're too old for that.

[Dogyeller]

So maybe there's an upside to this financial crisis if it forces people to rethink mindless consumption and the vicious cycle of more, more, more. But I have my doubts. What's the solution proposed to the problem caused by extending credit to people who can't afford to repay in order to allow them to purchase over-valued goods and property? Loosen up credit by reducing interest rates and giving banks TARP money to lend! We're treating the symptom, not the disease. The disease is the erroneous notion that the secret to happiness lies in having the right (material) stuff. The reality is that we don't own the stuff we buy on credit; it owns us. Our economy has literally been built on a house of cards. We need to change that shaky model, not prop it up.