KEY POINTS:
In Tuesdays with Morrie, a successful journalist flies thousands of miles across the US every Tuesday to spend the day with his old professor, Morrie Schwartz.
The professor is dying, and the journalist, Mitch Albom, records their conversations for a book that will later become an international bestseller.
They talk about the world, about feeling sorry for yourself, about love, family and marriage, about forgiveness, fear, ageing, greed, death, and culture.
And about what it takes to lead a meaningful life.
Morrie, whom Albom describes as looking like a cross between a biblical prophet and a Christmas elf, notices that although he's the one dying, it's his healthier visitors who seem unhappy.
He blames a culture in which money has become a god. We are too beguiled by materialistic things, Morrie observers, and they don't satisfy us.
"The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We're teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say, 'If the culture doesn't work, don't buy it'."
Morrie died in 1995, but I feel sure he'd have approved of another counter-cultural hero, Reverend Billy, whose Church of Stop Shopping is leading the charge against America's out-of-control consumer culture.
Last week, on a day dubbed "Black Friday" by the US retail industry to signal the start of a month of frenzied Christmas shopping, Reverend Billy's church led a protest against the increasing consumerism of Christmas, urging Americans to make it a Buy Nothing Day instead.
You could say that Reverend Billy is on a mission from God, to recapture the true meaning of Christmas and preach against the evils of worshipping the false gods of commerce and consumption. Except that, well, the Reverend is actually an actor-turned-activist by the name of Bill Talen, who eschews organised religion.
And who parodies evangelical preachers and Christian symbols to expose the bankruptcy of a consumer ideology that leads to increasingly crippling levels of personal debt in the US, damages families and neighbourhoods, and exploits workers in Third World countries.
Storming shopping malls across America, where they are the scourge of Starbucks, Wal-Mart and Disney, Reverend Billy and his non-religious, non-profit "church" call on shoppers to seek "the god that is not a product", perform "exorcisms" on cash registers and credit cards, offer shopping "interventions" to shopping addicts, take confessions of shopping sins, and warn that the "Shopocalypse" is coming unless shoppers repent.
Never mind the humorous but irreverent liberties. Many religious folk actually see him as a prophetic figure of our times.
Rev Billy and his Stop Shopping choir star in a documentary released in the US last Friday, What Would Jesus Buy?.
Based on their pre-Christmas 2005 protest tour of America's malls, the doco shows shoppers being challenged to think about the conditions of those who make the cheap goods they buy, highlights the impact of multinational conglomerates and outsourced labour and looks at statistics which show that on average Americans spend more than five hours a week shopping, while children spend less than 40 minutes a week engaged in meaningful conversations with their parents.
It won't be easy getting consumption addicts to step away from their credit cards. In the US, it's almost un-American not to spend. After 9/11, George W Bush urged his fellow Americans not to let the threat of terrorism stop them from returning to the malls.
The affliction isn't confined to Americans, of course. Here, too, supersized shopping malls have become our temples of worship, and credit card debt a millstone too many of us seem powerless to resist.
We've raised a generation of young people who find the idea of living within their means, and saving to buy, alien to their thinking. Reverend Billy isn't expecting people to stop shopping altogether, just to spend less, think about the consequences of their spending, and give more thought to their loved ones.
As another round of Christmas shopping looms, those of us who can't quite kick the addiction might consider buying for people for whom it would actually make a difference.
There's the Salvation Army's "Adopt a Family" scheme, started by a South Auckland lawyer just five years ago, which saw nearly 500 needy families receive personalised gifts and food last Christmas, bought by donors who already had more than they needed.
And there are schemes like Oxfam's Unwrapped, which provide a painless and remarkably affordable way to spread the love this Christmas ($40 provides safe water for 25 people, and $45 buys a goat).
The last word belongs to Morrie: "So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things.
"The way you get meaning in your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."
