Three years ago, fire ignited in a downtown building and destroyed two buildings, damaging another. Fortunately, no one was killed or injured. Mount Airy businesses and citizens banded together to support those who lost businesses, jobs and residences. Not every part of all of the relief effort was supported by everyone – the disaster and our response to it underscored our community spirit and the rifts within it.

That's the spirit of a small town. People give each other a hand up, help out and band together – or just don't, for whatever reason. People are people, and, to borrow an idea from Flannery O'Connor, small towns give us a chance to exhibit the best and worst of ourselves. There's nowhere to hide.

Our local businesses are established and sustained by our patronage. Whether it's the barber or the deli or the coffee shop or the butcher shop, the business community that supports our community is in turn supported by us.

Local businesses are accountable and responsive to us – the people who choose the products, hire the staff and set the policies are our neighbors, their children go to school with ours, they drive the same streets we do and jog past us on the sidewalk. If we need a product or service, it's the local business that will add it to their offerings if enough folks request it. If employees are worked too hard, it's the local business owners who answer directly to us. If business hours need to change, it's the local business owner who most readily responds to our request.

The people who hire our teenagers, support our school fundraisers and sustain our social and service clubs also run our local businesses. If they or their businesses vanished tomorrow, our lives would be impoverished and our community weakened.

Many folks have moved here fairly recently from somewhere else to find a community in which you'd like your kids to grow up, a quieter and more peaceful lifestyle, a break from the ratrace. It will only stay that way if you make a conscious decision to support the community you've made your own.

If you live here, but shop "down county," the shops and businesses that make our community distinctive will wither and die. If you live here, but have your car serviced and your hair styled and your nails done in Baltimore, this town won't long be the flourishing community that drew you here in the first place.

In making purchases this holiday season, buy from your local merchants. Make a pledge to log off the computer, take some time off from the daily grind, and drive downtown, uptown, or to the next town and support your friends – maybe friends you haven't even met yet – who give our locale its distinctive flavor. The dollars you spend at local businesses stay in the community and sustain the local economy, buffering us from the forces of macroeconomics and monopolies.

For every $100 you spend in a local business, about $70 stays in the local community. Contrast that with just over $40 left in the community when you spend $100 in a national chain store, and nothing at all when you spend money at the website of an online retailer. The money that stays in the community supports the community, making it thrive.

So browse through the shop you've always driven past. Stop for a cup of coffee, a soda or lunch, at the restaurant you've been promising yourself you'd visit. Get to know the proprietor and the employees – maybe, you already do.