“Look, Charlie, let's face it. We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket. It's run by a big eastern syndicate, you know.” – Lucy van Pelt to Charlie Brown in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”

Americans have worried about losing the true meaning of Christmas since at least 1965, when Charlie Brown lamented the holiday’s commercialization in a Peanuts special.

This year, there’s a movement afoot to bring Christmas closer to home. An apparently anonymous essay circulating on the Web has drawn the attention of people in Georgia. It calls for buying local services as gifts instead of products manufactured in foreign countries:

You see, Christmas is no longer about draining American pockets so that China can build another glittering city. Christmas is now about caring about US, encouraging American small businesses to keep plugging away to follow their dreams. And, when we care about other Americans, we care about our communities, and the benefits come back to us in ways we couldn’t imagine.

A Seattle-based group, TAP America, is pushing a similar movement. And people across Georgia are focusing on the meaning of supporting small and local businesses.

In Athens, residents are voicing concerns about the impact of major retail chains. In Virginia-Highland, small businesses are banding together to offer buy-local specials. Woodstock-Towne Lake Patch has run a series of articles focusing on local shopping options to support Small Business Saturday, and Northeast Cobb is another community with bountiful buy-local opportunities.

We want to know how people in Patch communities throughout northern Georgia are thinking about their holiday shopping this year.

What are your Christmas shopping plans?

Should Christmas shoppers consider where the gifts they purchase come from and where their money goes?

Is there a “buy local” or similar movement in your community? Should there be one?

Tell us in the comments.