While Jan Cecil's friends and neighbors thronged the malls on Friday, filling their shopping bags with sweater sets, video games and aromatherapy candles, she spent the day outdoors with her family.

Cecil, a Berkeley resident who works as a systems analyst, is part of a small but increasingly visible movement dedicated to buying and using less -- less fossil fuel, less processed food, fewer gifts.

In contrast with the orgy of shopping that consumes much of the country from late November through early January, several adult members of Cecil's family have agreed not to exchange gifts this year. (Kids will still get presents.)

MBA BY THE BAY: See how an MBA could change your life with SFGATE's interactive directory of Bay Area programs.

"I'm realizing that by giving people things, you're in some ways burdening them," Cecil said. "We have so much stuff that, in a way, it's a wonderful feeling of lightness to lessen it."

The day after Thanksgiving, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, has become the focus of the growing anti-consumerism movement. This year, "Buy Nothing Day" activities are planned in 40 countries, said Kalle Lasn, a Vancouver activist who helped launch the first Buy Nothing Day in 1993.

While some of the more in-your-face adherents carry signs and chant anti- capitalistic slogans in shopping districts like San Francisco's Union Square, others decide to hike, play with their kids or simply do something other than shop.

De-emphasizing shopping "lets me keep my focus on what's more important in life, like spending time with my daughter," said Joseph Beckenbach of San Jose, a software consultant.

Of course, many other Americans find fulfillment in gift giving and look forward to their annual shopping forays.

"We love Christmas shopping!" said Sue Tiesiera, who wore candy cane earrings and a cherry-red jacket while shopping in San Francisco on Friday. "I love the hustle and bustle."

Tiesiera and her daughter Tiffany had amassed six large shopping bags by 2: 30 p.m. on Friday. They had left their home in Hilmar, in the Central Valley, at 7:30 a.m. for a full day of shopping. "It's been a family tradition for many years," said Sue Tiesiera.

On a macro level, people like the Tiesieras seem to more than compensate for any dent in spending the anti-consumerism movement might be making.

General merchandise sales have grown an average of 4.8 percent annually in the last 10 years. Despite a slowing economy, the average U.S. household plans to spend $1,684 on gifts, travel, entertainment decorations and food this holiday season, according to a survey by American Express.

Nevertheless, the anti-consumerism movement is gaining ground, particularly among left-leaning people who are predisposed to a simple-living philosophy. While some non-leftists have also signed on, the issue has become a rallying point for virtually every progressive cause, including environmentalism, social justice and labor.

Over consumption "can be seen as the root of most evils," said Joe Hill, an organizer of this year's Buy Nothing Day activities on Union Square. "Products that have horrible effects on the environment are created for corporations to make money. Unions are busted so people can have cheaper products (from overseas). It spans all the different issues."

Groups involved in the Union Square demonstration this year included East Bay Food Not Bombs, Global Exchange, Art and Revolution, Hill's Reclaim the Streets and assorted individuals. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Save the Redwoods -- Boycott the Gap Campaign also protested individual stores.

So -- Retailer beware? Well, that's probably premature.

Lasn, the editor of Adbusters magazine, estimates that about 1 million people observed Buy Nothing Day last year. On a planet of more than 6 billion residents, that's barely a blip.

But adherents say the philosophy of living with less is spreading through a combination of word of mouth, a pair of seminal books and the Internet.

Buy Nothing Day activities all over the world are coordinated through www. adbusters.org, for example. People interested in exploring less consumption- oriented lifestyles can sign up for local discussion groups called "simplicity circles" at www.simpleliving.net.

Anti-consumerism has even popped up in mainstream media, most notably Time Inc.'s Real Simple magazine, which was launched this year with articles on topics like knitting and organizing one's kitchen.

IT ALL STARTED WITH THOREAU

Of course, the idea of living with less is hardly new. Henry David Thoreau's "Walden," an American classic, details the two years that Thoreau spent living off the land in a tiny cabin in the mid-1840s. In the 1960s, Duane Elgin's "Voluntary Simplicity" gained a small but devoted following.

But with the stresses of contemporary life mounting, the twin concepts of buying and working less appeal to more and more people, movement organizers believe.

"I think deep down there is a feeling that even though we're living in this moment of incredible prosperity, at the same time there's something wrong," said Lasn, whose magazine is a leading mouthpiece of the anti-consumerism movement.

"We're not as happy as we should be," he said. "We wonder, 'Why is my wife so anxious and why does she go shopping so often and why am I feeling dissatisfied?' This dark side of our consumer culture is what's fueling this movement."

Many who prefer the simple life have found their way into the movement through the book "Your Money or Your Life" by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez. The book has sold some 750,000 copies and appeared on the New York Times best seller's list.

Robin and her New Road Map Foundation (www.newroad

map.org) in Seattle have parlayed the book into a network of voluntary advisers who help consumers reorganize their finances to get out of debt and spend less money.

When "Your Money or Your Life" was published in 1992, "living lightly was a marginal activity," said Robin, who has been featured in Time magazine and on Oprah. "Now groups all over the country are looking at it. This thing has absolutely mushroomed."

Hundreds of simplicity circles have popped up around the country, including about a half-dozen in the Bay Area. In addition to "Your Money or Your Life," a book called "Circle of Simplicity" by Cecile Andrews is a common guidebook for these groups. (Andrews is a visiting professor at Stanford University.)

Whether the anti-consumerism movement will ever be embraced by the broad mainstream is an open question.

With retail sales heading up, up, up -- along with the size of SUVs, the incidence of childhood obesity and other consumption-oriented indicators -- many Americans don't seem terribly interested in cutting back.

PESSIMISTIC VIEW

But some activists believe our millennial buying spree is bound to come to an end -- if not voluntarily, then by some cataclysmic event just over the horizon.

"We cannot continue to sustain our current levels of consumption, where 5 percent of the world, Canadians and Americans, consume over 33 percent of the world's resources and spew out over one-third of the greenhouse gases and toxic waste while our TVs hype us up to ever-greater feats of consumption," said Lasn.

He foresees another 1929, complete with bread lines. "I'm ready for it," said Lasn. "I'm cultivating a beautiful garden."

Alex Molnar, director of the Center for Analysis of Commercialism in Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is less apocalyptic.

While he agrees that current levels of consumption are unsustainable ecologically, he believes an impending credit crunch will change mainstream consumption habits well before some environmental disaster brings the planet to its knees.

"We have a modern wage slave here, with four credit cards all charged to the max and people declaring bankruptcy at record rates," said Molnar.

"Do I think what we're doing now is sustainable for even another half century? Probably not. On the other hand, the human capacity for ignoring unwanted information is extraordinary."

Not surprisingly, retailers and marketers are not happy being branded the bad guys. "I take issue with these alarmist charges being leveled at retail," said Pam Rucker a spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation in Washington.

Consumerism is "dangerous to whom?" she asked. "Dangerous to the people whose livelihoods depend on consumption? To people who work in retail?"

Rucker noted that growth in retail sales has moderated this year as the economy has slowed, evidence that there is nothing unsustainable about consumer spending.

"People consume at a pace at which they feel comfortable," she said.