November 2007 saw the release of the film What Would Jesus Buy? which satirically focused on the commercialization of Christmas and materialism at large. The film stars activist/performance artist Bill Talen, who goes by the alias of “Reverend Billy,” and his troupe of activists, whose street theater performances take the form of a church choir called “The Church of Stop Shopping,” that sings anti-shopping and anti-corporate songs. The film follows Billy and his choir as they take a cross-country trip in the month prior to Christmas 2005, and spread their message against what they perceive as the evils of patronizing the retail outlets of several different large corporate chains.

This interview is from last year as well. As you can tell with the host, the notion that we’re bringing “the end of the world from shopping” was taken more or less a bit amusingly. Well flash forward to this year, where we now face in front of us the biggest economic downturn in half a century, in part due to a credit crisis spurred by consumers buying all kinds of crap they couldn’t afford, and this all isn’t so funny and quaint anymore. Retailers this holiday season may indeed go through a Shopocalypse where we actually don’t buy so much stuff.

When you consider that roughly 25% of our annual spending, garbage and ecological impact occurs between Thanksgiving and New Years, maybe belt tightening this year isn’t such a bad thing. The concept of “living within your means” may no longer seem so foreign to us Americans.