Materialism needn’t be an enemy of spirituality or idealism. A manufactured world can be a beautiful creation. When it takes the form of art it can be a powerful agent for real, often profound, awareness. There’s no necessity that it be in conflict with nature. Things made and valued by and for human activity can sometimes even rival what was and is made without man’s participation. Technology needn’t be rocket science to be at its best. Common everyday eyeglasses are still viewed as miraculous things, even by atheists.

The important thing is to remain able to see the forest for the trees. Things had just for the sake of status can far too easily lead down a path to where they become the ultimate master. Consumerism can become all-consuming.

Here we are coming to the end of another year and facing the familiar gauntlet of time rapidly running out before all the holiday hurdles are successfully surmounted. Hurdles where money’s routinely held to be the necessary root of all happiness. If all goes well the cyclical nature of our perpetually up-then-down economics will be blessed by a banner expenditure of financial faith in that feast or famine unending roller coaster ride.

This time around the seasonal joyride couldn’t even wait for Black Friday. Determined shoppers turned Thanksgiving, a day of traditional gratitude for what we already have, into the fastest-growing day for e-commerce ever. Its 28 percent jump in online sales of $3.7 billion was half of what just the next day would be a record-setting $6.22 billion in additional virtual shopping even before Cyber Monday. High fives to the internet. Slimmer pickings for what remains of traditional brick-and-mortar see, feel, taste and try-on retailing as even Small Business Saturday now surreally boasts its own rapidly rising online sales.

Religious Spending Sunday would seem the logically faithful next step in our cultural devotion to celebrating a work-spend treadmill existence that worships the accumulation of more and more, without end, amen. Certainly, there’s no day of rest for the weary consumer just because the 30th day before Christmas has yet to be properly branded and who might otherwise miss out on yet another possible ultimate discount.

Whether preyed upon or having shopping prayers answered, who can easily resist the incessant promise of purchasing something at a lower cost, even if that likely raises the price of routine purchases year-round? My wry working-class mom used to say that it was too bad we didn’t have more money to take advantage of all the sales so that we could save even more money. Fortunately, back then most people’s household spending was kept in check by a checkbook.

The trouble with capitalism’s dark side addictiveness is that its entry always seems an immediately inviting socially acceptable norm. Imagine being able to buy something today, right now, with money you don’t actually yet have. Where’s the harm?

Ask anyone habitually beset by chronic credit card debt.

Imagine a world where stores stay open 24/7. Where they never close. Where every store worldwide is right there in your home or accessible from wherever you might be. How addictive might that be?

Before the internet’s intervention our money was typically spent by a “shop, pay, carry away” exercise in human interaction. This required actual stores. Real municipal gathering places where customers and retailers engaged in local commerce that enriched a shared experience of community. Now, more and more people prefer to live an experience of increasingly faceless human exchange. Maybe it’s just the natural fallout from the insidious Big Box bare-bones reorientation to shopping where once knowledgeable and helpful employees are all but removed from an equation essentially little different from the fleeting hi-and-goodbye customer service embodied by a lone and hurriedly driven UPS driver.

I can often still remember where I’ve bought things from long ago, things which by such alive association transport me back in time, recalling a place, person or circumstance tied to that purchase. These materially presented memories are even better when the object that holds them has been a gift. The occasion might no longer be accurately recalled, or even whose generosity, but the intended object of friendship and love conveyed remains intact, treasured way beyond the actual gift’s attributes of function, allure or extravagance.

Online shopping takes me nowhere and definitely not in a hurry. What the difference is between endless scrolling and standing in an aisle unassisted eludes me. I just don’t have the time for it. I prefer the true convenience of real world shopping and its organic immediacy over the numbing click-and-it’s-yours detachment of making a purchase based on deciding from a remote lineup of product mugshots. Mostly, I value corporeal shopping’s embrace of the unforeseen people-to-people encounters that actual life gives away for free.

Though spirituality is sadly a secondary holiday season focus, materialism nevertheless acknowledges the natural virtues of physical existence despite all the spatial and temporal boundaries now being systematically trespassed by our growing addiction to virtual reality.

Let’s all celebrate each other by reintroducing ourselves to the far more human pleasures of actual shopping.

Gary Anderson lives in Bath.