Editorial: Staying close to home
It’s that time of year, the Season of Light, with the winter dusk coming alive with the colors of Christmas. Special songs and tunes play in supermarket aisles and on street corners, and the smell of fresh-cut pine is on the breeze. Families are happily making plans to be together, and the faces of little ones brighten in expectation and wonder.
Wait a minute — isn’t it a bit soon for all that? It’s not even Thanksgiving, and we’re supposed to be singing carols?
Yes, it’s also that other time of year: the Season of Complaints. An old friend of ours once said he was beating the Christmas rush: “I’m getting depressed early.”
We won’t descend that deep into cynicism, but at times it’s hard not to be laid low by advertisers mobilizing into assault mode, running guilt-trips or begging us to buy! Buy! Buy!
A new buzzword in big-time retailing is “Christmas Creep,” describing the early (getting earlier every year) blitz rolled out to remind us that time is wasting for us to hurry on down to be separated from our money. And it all can take a serious toll.
The American Psychological Association has found seven out of 10 people are stressed by a feeling of not having enough money, and more than half are often distraught about giving and getting gifts.
The commercialization of Christmas is in some ways very old news. Even the sight of shoppers knocking each other down to get into a store to buy electronics is now an American holiday ritual, with many people showing up just for the spectacle.
But something that’s being lost amid the tinsel is going out to shop at a big box instead of making the time to go to a local store. Also, more of us are not physically visiting any store at all, but choosing to shop while staring at a screen. According to Forbes, sales during last year’s “Cyber week, including the five days from Thanksgiving, were up 7.8% compared to last year … Cyber Monday e-commerce spending in the U.S. totaled $12.4 billion, up 9.6% year over year.”
If some of these figures remind us to get up and out to visit our local merchants, then all the pre-Christmas hoopla doesn’t offend us at all. Shopping locally helps everyone. Economic studies show that for every $100 spent at a locally owned business, close to $70 stays in the community. Local stores, shops, and restaurants pay the salaries of their employees, who in turn spend money on the North Fork.
In a world of big retailers and shopping by clicking, our small businesses fight to survive, to continue to stay open while providing us with goods and services along with the invaluable bonus of a welcoming connection to the place we live.
Shop local. Check out the Riverhead News-Review for ads and upcoming shopping special features for some ideas to keep our community prospering.
