From the Editors: November 2025

Mariah Carey/YouTube

It's November and that means Mariah Carey is about to be officially unleashed upon the world. It's best not to try to fight it; just give in.

And it's our Shop Local issue, which comes every year just as predictably as that festive earworm, along with our titular Shop Local Gift Guide. And man, if there were ever a year to know where your money's going, it's 2025.

It's never felt great, but this year it feels downright icky to share an Amazon wishlist of the items you'd like to have under the tree. Giving more money to billionaires actively working to dismantle our democracy? Bolstering an oligarchy while food security for millions of American children is on the line? Supporting those companies who support candidates actively prohibiting the reopening of our government, keeping thousands of federal employees furloughed or working without pay during the season of giving? Feeding that insatiable capitalist monster, one that is actively destroying our environment and paying its workers so little that they come to depend on the very assistance being wrenched from them, right before the holidays? Ebenezer Scrooge looks downright wholesome in comparison.

So let's just not.

Let's not continue to build expectations for a bigger, shinier, more disposable holiday season year after year. Let's scale back, and make more with less. Let's get cheesy and embrace the moral of all those holiday stories out there, let's listen to Mariah: all we really need for Christmas is each other. And here in Erie, in our community, we've got a lot to love. Just take a quick peek within.

The argument against buying local often comes down to cost. Whatever item in question usually does cost more locally than it would online. I'd retort with a suggestion that you look at the true cost of what you're buying from that massive corporation and what that choice takes away from your local economy, and really, your neighbors.

All of the small businesses, makers, and craftspeople featured in our gift guide are the people closest to us – they live in our neighborhoods, they employ our citizens, their kids go to our schools, they donate to our local nonprofits, they sponsor local food drives, and they're actively invested in making Erie a community to be proud of. When you take money that would go back into their businesses, or to their employees, or into their communities, and give it to a massive billion-dollar corporate enterprises, the true cost is loss of community. And no amount of savings on some cheap plastic toy a kid is going to completely forget about after a week is worth that.

So let's think smaller. Let's act smaller. Let's get creative and more thoughtful and intentional with our festivities. Let's make some things. Let's think hard about what we're giving and where we can get those items locally – and we've made that extra easy for you with the aforementioned gift guide, as well as features within that show off our neighborhoods (the Sisters of St. Joseph and the Erie Downtown Partnership) and our makers (NWPAMade and Rustic Wolves).

Maybe, because the cost of buying locally can be ostensibly more than online, we scale it back a bit and lean into the fact that we're just not willing to pay the cost of supporting billionaires over our local community anymore. Let's collectively reset our expectations and appreciate the real and tangible value in shopping local. Let's listen to Mariah and focus on each other, both our local community and our loved ones, this holiday season.