This past weekend brought Small Business Saturday and the start of 2025’s holiday shopping season.

We understand the impulse to decry the consumerism of the season — to search for something more authentic or more meaningful. And we believe there certainly should be days and moments ahead of the holidays for reflection on the season’s meaning.

But we also must defend consumerism.

Our economy — and our society supported by that economy — is built on certain precepts — our towns, our neighborhoods, our families are able to grow, to chase their dreams and to enjoy their lives because the wages and salaries from honest work supports their ambitions, their goals — their lives. And the majority of those careers and jobs, in essence, are a matter of meeting the needs or desires of consumers for goods and services.

Even beyond the scope of the free market, employees of school districts, municipal and state governments and the federal government provide services our elected leadership believes the public wants. And the taxes necessary for those careers’ paychecks comes from taxes, generally paid, once again, with money earned from the taxpayers’ jobs.

For many businesses, the holiday shopping season is a critical time — the sales made this season could well determine if 2026 will be a time of growth and the creation of new jobs or a time when a business must scale back, leave job openings unfilled or, worse, lay off current staff.

Writ large, it can determine if our downtowns thrive and grow or wither and decay.

While it may occasionally be chic to criticize materialism and commercialism — materialistic desires are met by the hard work and sense of responsibility of your neighbors.

It’s people’s lives and futures at stake.

So we encourage our readers to visit locally-owned businesses, to spend money locally and to embrace the generosity and joy of gift-giving.

And, when those reflective moments to consider the deeper meaning of Christmas and other holidays come, understand that consumers are not an impediment to those deeper meanings — consumer spending allows many of your friends, neighbors and family members the economic security to contemplate on the significance of Christ’s birth, the miracle of Hanukkah and the hope for a better year we share on New Year’s Eve.