December 26, 2007
Wednesday

Today is the Feast of Stephen, the day Good King Wenceslas looked out and saw a poor man gath’ring winter fu-u-el (sing with me!). It was also my father’s birthday. He’d be 91 today. I don’t remember ever getting my father a birthday present, nor even a card. I don’t think anyone else did either. My freshman year in college I had a boyfriend named Stephen whose father was also Stephen, and they invited me and my family to their house for dinner and to raise a glass in honor of St. Stephen and my father’s birthday. Forty-two years later that day is the central memory of that relationship, and I recall it fondly each year.

The Feast of Stephen is also the day that some stores open before dawn to accommodate the onslaught of shoppers looking for bargains or ready to exchange gifts they didn’t like or want for ones they might. I was not among those shoppers today. I have enough wrapping paper, party ware, and other Christmas consumables to last into the next century (I was saying that as a joke in 1999 but I think it’s still true), although Ron says we are low on “from-tos,” the tags you put on gifts to say who’s giving it and who’s getting it.

I did not even leave the house today. I opened a new notebook early this morning, Volume 24 since I began writing steadily fifteen years ago. I drew together the materials for my Annual Holiday Letter, conscious that there were at least three names that I had to remove from the address list because the recipients have died. To distract myself from that sad task I read some e-mail. Someone on a list I’ve read for a long time (peopled by sophisticated, educated publishing professionals) recommended as “nice, subversive fun” the concept of “shopdropping,” outlined in a New York Times article called “Anarchists in the Aisles.” The idea is that instead of “shoplifting,” taking something out of a store without paying, one puts something into a store. According to the article, “motivations vary.”

Anti-consumerist artists slip replica products packaged with political messages onto shelves while religious proselytizers insert pamphlets between the pages of gay-and-lesbian readings at book stores.

Self-published authors sneak their works into the “new releases” section, while personal trainers put their business cards into weight-loss books, and aspiring professional photographers make homemade cards — their Web site address included, of course — and covertly plant them into stationery-store racks.

There is even an official site, Shopdropping.net, which calls the activity “culture jamming” and regards it as a form of performance art. I looked at some of the projects endorsed and celebrated by Ryan Watkins-Hughes, the developer of the site. They included stealing (that would be a crime) Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls from a store, performing a complicated circuit board switch so that Barbie receives Joe’s voice and vice versa, and then surreptitiously returning the dolls to the store, where they are bought by unsuspecting consumers (mostly parents trying to fulfill their children’s Christmas wishes). Another steals CDs by Paris Hilton, alters the inside art to portray the socialite nude or with a dog’s head, inserts his own music CD in the box, and puts them back in the store.

At least Zoë Sheehan Saldaña doesn’t steal stuff. She buys garments from Wal-Mart, takes them home, and duplicates them by hand line for line and embellishment for embellishment, using her own materials. She then sews the original tags into the replica garment and puts it back on the rack in the store (surreptiously, not after having returned it to get her money back).

I am way too unsophisticated about art to understand what Ms. Saldaña is about, why she would devote her time and her talent to creating a piece of art no one knows is there and which Wal-Mart will get double the sales for. But, as I said, at least she isn’t stealing or defacing anything.

Members of the discussion list I referred to went on about how much fun the shopdropping might be. They thought it was hilarious. One member who particularly enjoyed the vandalized Barbie/G.I. Joe idea followed her post with a warm and fuzzy message about peace on earth and the hope that we can all continue to live in harmony. (Continue?) I responded that one way to do that would be to eschew seemingly “fun” or “amusing” practices such as shopdropping. Not only does a lot of it fall under the classification of criminal activity, it causes problems for the consumers who buy the bogus or altered goods, the clerks who have to try to straighten the mess out, and, in the case of items intended for children’s gifts, results in confused and disappointed youngsters who are the least capable of understanding whatever artistic or political statement is being made. The True Meaning of the season is to try to make things better for each other, not worse, I said.

For that I got a reprimand from the owner of the list about my hurting the feelings of people who find shopdropping amusing and an invitation to leave the list unless I could control myself.

I just don’t get it.

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