Buy Nothing Day 1998:
Buy Nothing Day in The Netherlands

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Nov. 30, 1998

Buy Nothing Day in The Netherlands was great this year! It was the fourth time Niet-Winkeldag took place overhere and many people in the streets seemed to have heard about Nuy Nothing Day already.

We had lots of good publicity, both beforhand, during the actions and afterwards. Buy Nothing Day was announced several times in the national radio news-headlines (!), and most important national papers published good and serious (!) articles on the day itself.

Omslag gave lots and lots of interviews (even to a Swiss newspaper and to some French radio- and tv-journalists!) and local groups gave interview beforehand too, to announce their actions.

Now that the street-actions are over, our telephone-lines are still red-hot: people keep calling for more information, wanting copies of the Consume Less Paper (but we've completely run out of stock), and again... more journalists. Tonight one of us is a studio-guest in a national talk-radio programme...

Last sunday-night the BND-campaign was a prominent item on the national Dutch tv, as a part of a very popular programme :)) (see the Hilversum action-report)

This morning (Monday) a big picture of the Rotterdam-action was on the front-page of a well-respected national newspaper!

So you can imagine, that we feel very satisfied. We have lots of new ideas and planns for next year's Buy NOthing Day already..

But now, back to last Saturday:

There was a new record in the number of local actions: 21 cities were involved. Almost all activists were very satisfied because of the - in general - very positive reactions from the shopping audiance. They also got a lot of media-attention.

Below we give you an overview of local actions and a short impression of the kind of activities that took place on the Dutch Niet-Winkeldag, Saturday November 28, 1998. The report is based upon telephone-interviews with we held with local organizors on Saturday-evening. We couldn't reach all of them...

For a good understanding:
Santa Claus is NOT the same as Christmas Santa. Santa Claus used to be a children's feast, with small presents, poems and creative surprises. But that was long ago... These days Santa Claus has become more and more a commercialized gifts-event (like Christmas). Santa Claus is celebrated each year on December 5th. The last Saturday in November (Buy Nothing Day!!) is THE day, when people go out to buy lots and lots and lots of Santa Claus-gifts. And of course many of them are also on the road for their Christmas-shoppings.

We tried to give it a rest...

Best wishes from The Netherlands,
Omslag,

Dick Verheul - Marta Resink

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