I hate the mall frenzy on the day after Thanksgiving. So I avoid the mall. That's a personal preference, not a moral superiority on my part. I agree that wasteful buying, spending money for the sake of spending money, spending more than you can afford, is a bad, bad idea (or a pair of bad ideas, depending on how you look at it). It was a bad idea yesterday, and it will be a bad idea tomorrow.
Buying is not in itself bad. Spending money is okay; that's what it's there for, either to use now or to use later. Going to one extreme one day and another the rest of the season or the rest of the year doesn't make any sense to me. Pick your philosophy, think it through, stick with it.
