Anti-consumerism

After I wrote about waste, I realize I'm an anti-consumerist.  I practice what I preach.  I only buy what is necessary.  I admit I'm frugal, because I come from a thrifty family.  It's not a wealthy, successful family, so you learn to scrimp and save.  I recently got into a tweet war with a couple of women, because I tweeted it was interesting that vegans are likely to enjoy better health than meat eaters, and perhaps this is karma.  A woman disagreed with that, because she is some sort of self-appointed diet and fitness guru.  Another woman weighed in; she said veggies are too expensive in the country where she lives.  I mentioned that I can afford to eat healthily, because I live a frugal life; they both made fun of that response.  But so many people's priorities are out of whack.  They put unnecessary, extravagant material purchases before necessities like nutritious food. 
My birthday is approaching, and I love music.  I have a ton of it, though.  I don't really need more.  It has been a while since I bought myself an album I wanted, though.  And something that's been bothering me is that I'm not getting an extra day off this week for Thanksgiving.  My supervisor was surprised that they didn't ask me if I wanted to work the usual amount of days this week or have an extra one off.  So that makes me want to treat myself even more.  If I do, and it's a big "if," because I know I don't need it, I'll try to purchase an album in MP3 format; this way, it would go digitally right to my computer, and then I'd put it on a flash drive, which I already have.  So there would be no waste associated with such a transaction: no materials, no packaging, no paper, no plastic.  It's, no surprise, also cheaper to buy it that way.  If the album I wanted was only available as a CD, then I might buy it, but I really don't see myself buying more than one. 
If I ever get around to it, I will try to sell much of my large CD collection.  All I need to do is put a CD onto my computer, and then I have it.  I no longer need the CD.  My CD player also plays music from flash drives.  Flash drives can be plugged right into the CD player.  The player never has trouble reading music on the flash drive.  I have had problems with CDs, though.  Sometimes they don't sit in the tray right, and they need to be adjusted.  Sometimes the player takes a while to read a CD.  The CD player fails to play CDs in other ways.  These problems can be remedied (so far), but, for me, CDs are more problematic than flash drive music.
As usual, I will buy no Christmas presents for anyone this year.  As a result, I won't receive any either, which is fine with me.  Think of the waste that will be a result of all the consumerism that will occur this holiday season.  People will give, and receive, piles of needless crap.  Children will get toys that they will lose interest in shortly: assuming they were ever interested in them at all.  Adults will also receive tons of gifts they don't want, which will also result in a mountain of waste.  Then there's all the wasted packaging, wrapping paper, and the shopping bags this crap went into.  And, of course, this stuff didn't magically appear in stores.  It was manufactured, and I've already mentioned how much waste there is at the corporate level, where money is more important than anything, which certainly includes reducing waste.  Then they were transported to the stores: probably by fossil-fuel burning trucks at some point in the journey.
If you care about the environment, it makes sense to be anti-consumerism.  Reduce waste.  Reduce litter.  Save money.  Reduce the amount of possessions you have.  The more stuff you have, the less free you are.  The more stuff you have, the harder it is to bring it with you.