NOTE: This piece was originally published at our Substack newsletter A Public Witness.
For many businesses, it’s almost the most wonderful time of year — the Christmas shopping season. Last year, American shoppers spent nearly $1 trillion in November and December. Even with economic troubles this year, that number is expected to increase.
With much of the Mammon spent online, such commercialization of the holy season has particularly helped Amazon. The behemoth accounts for close to one-quarter of online purchases in the weeks leading up to Christmas, thus helping Jeff Bezos rise to the third-wealthiest person in the world. Bezos has used his fortune and influence to support Trump and dismantle the Washington Post (which he also owns) so it no longer serves as an effective journalistic watchdog on the administration.
In response to the power and politics of one of our new techno-Caesars, the Center on Faith & Justice at Georgetown University recently launched a new campaign encouraging people to pledge not to shop on Amazon during this Advent season. The “No Amazon for Advent” effort is also backed by numerous other groups, including Faithful America, Red Letter Christians, and state councils of churches in California, Maine, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin. A Public Witness is also one of the official campaign partners.
“Many of us already take issue with large corporations like Amazon for their exploitation of workers, environmental harms, and the damaging effects they have on small businesses,” the No Amazon for Advent site explains. “The close relationship between Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos is indicative of an alarming trend of the ultra-wealthy gaining access to political power at the highest levels, solidified through exchanges like Amazon’s $1 million donation to Trump’s 2025 inauguration. Amazon has stood complicit in the current administration’s attack on democratic norms and human dignity by continuing to profit from government contracts and surveillance technologies that enable these injustices. Amazon earns millions each year by providing cloud computing services to ICE — services that ICE relies on to conduct its operations. Amazon represents a moral crisis in corporate America.”
“Instead of enriching the world’s wealthiest, we choose to strengthen the places and people that make our communities whole. We choose local businesses struggling to survive, nonprofits caring for the vulnerable, and neighbors in need of compassion,” the site adds. “We choose to pass down memories to our new generations through the gifting of heirlooms and other items that hold special importance to us and our families. We practice being intentional by spending less on things and more on purpose.”
Grounding the appeal in the long tradition of boycotts, the No Amazon for Advent initiative emphasizes that such moves “allow ordinary people to challenge unjust systems by redirecting their economic power toward justice and community. Even if this boycott doesn’t affect Amazon’s profits, it still matters. Taking action — however small — helps us break habits of complicity and reminds us that democracy depends on millions of small, moral choices made every day.”
In addition to urging people to resist the over-commercialization of Christmas and to reduce or even avoid shopping at Amazon, the effort includes a call to Amazon “to stand up for democracy and human rights, treat workers with dignity, and align its vast influence with fairness and accountability.”
Jim Wallis, the director of the Center on Faith & Justice at Georgetown University, explained the effort is really about working “to strengthen our communities.”
“It is easier to stay comfortable. Amazon has made it simple to live without leaving our homes, without conversation, without connection. But that comfort has come at the cost of community. I confess that I buy too many Christmas gifts for my kids, and I have become accustomed to the ease of Amazon,” added Wallis, author of The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy. “Let us make Advent not about what we buy but about what we build together.”
Packages riding on a belt are scanned to be loaded onto delivery trucks at the Amazon Fulfillment center in Robbinsville Township, New Jersey, on Aug. 1, 2017. (Julio Cortez/Associated Press)
Among the various resources shared by the No Amazon for Advent site is an encouragement for people to buy their books at Bookshop instead of Amazon. Launched as a website in 2020, Bookshop not only serves as an alternative to Amazon but also supports independent bookstores across the country. Links shared to books in issues of A Public Witness are to Bookshop (except in rare cases when a book isn’t there), which also provides an affiliate payment to us. And as an author, I appreciate the platform’s better support of both authors and local booksellers.
You can show your support for the No Amazon for Advent effort by signing the pledge online. Additionally, as the start of Advent nears, you can also sign up to receive our special daily Advent email devotionals at Unsettling Advent. More than 20 writers will help us consider Advent in a time of religious nationalism, starvation, and soldiers in the streets. May both of these efforts help us all in this holy season to put aside the values of our society and focus instead on the promise of God with us.
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor
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