The three days after Thanksgiving make up the busiest shopping weekend of the year. Unfortunately, what that means is that on Friday and Saturday mornings, cars will be lined up at the edges of town, leaving for Durango, Farmington and further destinations.

We hope this year, every shopper will think twice before leaving town, because the reasons for making your purchases here are important ones.

The main one, of course, is what goes around, comes around. Money spent in Cortez helps local merchants provide goods and services that might not otherwise be available here. Sure, we like to do our Christmas shopping elsewhere, but we don’t want to drive to Farmington every time we need a 3/8" socket or a pair of socks. In order to stay open to meet our basic needs in a cost-effective manner, local merchants need to do a substantial volume of business. If they don’t, prices go up and availability goes down.

Those merchants are the ones who open their cash drawers when school groups need donations, when civic organizations need assistance in providing food and Christmas gifts for the needy, when the senior citizens are raising funds to support their programs. They’re also the men and women who sit beside us in church and at basketball games, who coach our youth athletic teams and lead Scout troops, and who patronize OUR businesses. That’s how they pay us back for our support. If community-minded people could no longer make a living here, a lot would change.

In addition, we all benefit from the sales tax dollars that flow into local coffers when we shop locally. Think about it: who pays for law enforcement, parks, street lights, the new jail, downtown beautification, tourism promotion? Those services are funded by a small percentage of the money spent here in Cortez. They benefit everyone who spends time here, but they benefit those of us who live and work here most of all.

If our business community were to dry up, many of those services would still need to be funded. Those of us who were left would just have to pay more for them. Think about that when you’re shopping out of town and supporting, for example, lighted Christmas decorations along Farmington’s Main Street. Who benefits most?

Yes, there are some products that simply aren’t available in Cortez. Do we really try to find them here before we hop in the car and head somewhere else, though? It’s certainly possible to make a Christmas list of only gifts from the immediate area, and they’d be welcome gifts, some of them available nowhere else.

As a community that seeks to attract visitors, we recognize that travel is enjoyable, to Cortez residents as well as to those who come here on vacation. A Christmas shopping trip is an annual tradition for many people, and the urge to go somewhere bigger to shop is probably universal. Droves of Farmington residents undoubtedly will spend this weekend in Albuquerque. We’re not going to escape that trend.