SOUL FOOD:

You’ve survived Black Friday and Cyber Monday but 26 more days to shop before Christmas — six before Hanukkah, 27 before Kwanzaa — loom ahead. The greater part of the holiday retail melee still lies ahead.

With Christmas tree lots and holiday lights greeting me at every turn, it is about now nonetheless I usually begin to feel like the Grinch. I don’t want to see the inside of a store until sometime next year, after the Valentine’s Day chocolates and greeting cards have all disappeared.

So when my husband showed me an ad for the docu-comedy about the stop shopping campaign of the Rev. Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, I knew had to see it.

Morgan (“Super Size Me”) Spurlock produced and Rob VanAlkamade directed the film titled “What Would Jesus Buy?” It’s a 90-minute spin-off of VanAlkamade’s shorter 2005 documentary, “Preacher With an Unknown God, ” which was a selection at 30 international film festivals and a Media That Matters semi-finalist, winning a Best Experimental prize at Santa Cruz in 2005 and a Jury Award at Sundance last year.

In 1997, a man named Bill Talen was a self-described “lost idealist,” who, having hitchhiked his way to New York City from San Francisco, was working as a catering waiter. Disheartened by what he describes as the Disneyfication of Times Square and the consumption of his neighborhood by the monoculture of corporate retail chains like Starbucks and Wal-Mart, Talen became a man with a mission.

He bought a white clerical collar to wear with his white waiter’s tux, bleached his hair and sprayed it into a pompadour. The persona of the Rev. Billy — a champion of small businesses, neighborhoods and workers’ rights — was born.

He took to the streets preaching against an über-consumerism that leads us to love things and use people instead of loving people and using things.

Starbucks, Wal-Mart and Disney form the Rev. Billy’s “axis of [consumerism] evil.” They, like other corporate mega-retailers, want our experiences to be mediated through what they sell, he contends.

His anti-consumerism, pro-workers interventions have gotten him banned from every Disney property worldwide. He’s not allowed within 250 yards of any Starbucks in California and Starbucks withdrew its sponsorship of a festival that screened the film about him.

Ten years ago, the Rev. Billy was a lone voice shouting in the urban wilderness. The Stop Shopping choir of roughly 40 members and the Not Buying It band of nine has joined him since. Together they are out to save the world from the impending Shopocalypse. “What Would Jesus Buy?” focuses on their efforts during the shopping season of 2005 to save Christmas from commercialism and rampant over-consumption.

Their street theater activism is pure tent revival, less Jesus. But then the Rev. Billy doesn’t claim to be Christian.

He is, according to a bio on the movie’s website, “an officiant of the rites of marriage in New York City” but not a seminary graduate nor ordained minister. The Christian trappings are foremost a vehicle for an arguably Christianity-compatible message: Don’t be greedy.

After all, Jesus did rage at the moneychangers in the temple for their usury. And gluttony, envy and covetousness are among the Seven Deadly Sins.

The Rev. Billy paces and portends. He lays on hands and is slain in the Spirit.

He whispers and bellows. Americans spend an average of one hour a week in worship, he says, compared to five hours a week shopping.

In “What Would Jesus Buy?” the Church of Stop Shopping troupe travels from coast to coast in two vintage buses (until one is rear-ended by a fully-loaded semi-truck, sending 13 members of the entourage to the hospital – three to intensive care). But within two days they are (miraculously according to VanAlkamade) back on the road with a chartered bus.

They command center stage at Minnesota’s Mall of America. They storm Abercrombie & Fitch.

Amused and curious shoppers look on from a wary distance (Maybe tent revival preacher is not the warmest medium for the message?). Security guards circle and close in.

The band rocks. The choir belts it out. And the Rev. Billy never fails to entertain even when, in his over-the-top preacher act, his message sometimes gets lost.

During an exorcism of corporate demons in front of Wal-Mart’s headquarters, the Rev. Billy repeatedly shouts “We have millions of Americans inside our bodies! We have millions of Americans inside our bodies!” Then he swoons into a hedge.

“That was terrible,” he later moans to his church-and-protest director wife. And she agrees.

“What Would Jesus Buy?” never quite answers the question it asks, though a handful of shoppers and retail clerks give it a shot (A Sony Playstation 3? A Nintendo Wii?).

And not everything the Rev. Billy says makes sense. Even his plea to stop shopping can’t be taken literally and that’s not what he intends.

What he wants us to do is to think about how we shop. Ask ourselves some questions about what we buy and why we buy it.

Why am I buying this? Where was it made? Who made it? Under what conditions?

Do I need it? How will I pay for it? Do I have a place for it?

Are the workers involved in this sale making a living wage? Vote with your dollars, the Rev. Billy urges, for basic changes that need to be made.

He’s engaging us in a conversation we truly need to have. Yet in a global economy, he acknowledges, the answers aren’t always obvious or simple.

Because it’s fun, interesting and well-worth seeing, I wish I could tell you the film was soon coming to Huntington Beach. But it’s probably not.

It opened at the Sunset 5 in Los Angeles Nov. 21 and it will play there through the holidays.

See it if you can but if you can’t, I’ll leave you with its bottom line tip for your Christmas shopping.

Spend half as much [on gifts] and give twice as much [to others in need] as you did at Christmas last year.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at [email protected].