Some of the things we shop for the holiday is meaningless.

Is it moral to go on holiday shopping spree while millions of people experience unemployment and home foreclosure?

The American market scores well during the holiday season. During the holidays, beginning Thanksgiving through New Year, people just have the penchant to accumulate and spend. It is a choice with no option: to buy new stuff either to own or to give. Stores sell massive amounts of merchandise and people buy them, not out of need but simply because it’s the holiday. Of all times, spending has an excuse.

But for an economy that has gone downhill, with people losing their jobs and being evicted from their homes every day, is it rightful to do rash spending? Even if we are not affected with the unemployment and the housing crisis and we have money to expend, is it moral to go on a holiday spree when we are aware that people next to us don’t know how to afford the next meal?

Even food banks are getting bankrupt nowadays. More and more people are lining up for free food. If the there will not be an increase in food donations, the supply will be depleted fast. Food banks have lessened their rations in order to feed more people.

We hear the numbers on the news every hour: unemployed people and foreclosed homes to the millions. It is staggering. We can’t help but wonder who is next. Or if we are next. We may not be part of the statistics right now, but what about tomorrow? How can we be sure that there will always be a roof over our head? Or that we will have work as long as we want to?

But it’s not only the consumers; it’s also the businesses that are at play here. There is never a shortage of advertising -- television commercials, printed ads, mailed catalogs – they are left and right. Like we are not going through a crisis and we are in a terrific economy. All these advertising, including those of the big three auto industries who are asking the Congress for some-billions-of-dollar-bailout (they could have had slashed their advertising budget) are all luring us to spend money, mostly money that we don’t have. Credit card companies are going crazy offering no interest rates for certain months to new and existing customers knowing that people are going to end up paying more interest because they would not be able to pay in full for many years to come.

These are uncertain times and to go on a wasteful spending even if it is the holiday does not really fit well in the picture. We have to be mindful and watchful of how, where, and what to buy. Forget extravagance this year as this year was not like the last or any other. Some journalists claim we are in a Depression. For this holiday, we can streamline, we can scrimp. And yes, we’ll do this in fairness to our fellow Americans who are suffering the blow of this awful economy.