Don't buy X! Help the victims instead!

Yesterday I imagined that "don't buy fireworks, donate the money to the tsunami victims instead"-conversation existed only among my friends, but apparently this is some larger campaign. Aside from the obvious point that most of the people saying that are people who don't like the fireworks to begin with, one weird thing that I noticed on both sides of the conversation is that a lot of people seem to believe that sacrificing something they really care about is somehow more noble. WTF is with that? One would think that anyone in their right mind would sacrifice the things that they least cared about.

Also, there seems to be some weird "light a candle" campaign. What's the point in this? I mean, people who like candles will probably light them anyway, and why would the rest of us do so? How exactly does this help some poor bugger in Sri Lanka?