The BND site maintained by AdBusters is optimistic:

"More than a million people will celebrate 11 years of opposition on the unofficial "opening day" of the Christmas frenzy. Play this one right and we will make Buy Nothing Day 2002 a global event on par with Earth Day. Previous participants have come up with the traditions: swap meets, teach-ins, concerts, street theatre, credit-card cut-ups, postering, potlucks. But hey, it's a culture jam - no one's drawing up any rules."

Lots of people will experience varying mileage on the issue, and there are probably people who will maintain that spending even a day refusing to buy because "it's the holidays" is flatly unpatriotic during hard times.

It's also interesting to note that Mennonites in Canada have decided to launch Buy Nothing Christmas. AdBusters claims it's part of a broader drift among religious groups to protest the rabid consumerism of the season. Progressives like to smirk when they see the "Jesus is the reason for the season" signs. Sad that they decide to protest the fundies by going out and buying more shit.

Anyhow, even though I'm not convinced it amounts to much as a protest that's heard, it's an interesting exercise in taking time to think about consumption. And it's pretty cool that AdBusters finally managed to buy some ad time.