Buying just to buy?

As I sit here, it is Black Friday, the day we Americans rush out to buy baubles and trinkets for our loved ones while saving the economy and satisfying our civic duty to spend, spend, spend! Yet while gift giving is of itself a good thing which ought to be encouraged, and as I am also as free market as anyone, I am not sure all this fuss is all that good. Why should we allow our charity to be scheduled by corporate structures? If you see something someone may like or need, buy it and give it to them right then and there; there’s greater love in that kind of act than in anything even vaguely coercive. Further, why should I feel obliged to buy things solely to prop up the economy? Should not the nation’s salespersons and manufacturers provide me with objects needed and reasonable of their own merit if they want my dollars? I am not obliged to buy simply because someone else wants my money, or even for the good of the country. I am obliged to give out of love and concern for my fellow man. I am obliged to buy only the necessary things to support myself and my family. While the will of society to do these things isn’t, admittedly, evil, it still seems to make the obligation shallow, particularly considering the amount of useless materials we exchange in the name of economic goodwill. Do things for people, by all means. Be charitable and considerate. But do it because you want to rather than because you need to.