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The results are in. People spent more money on Christmas shopping last weekend than they did the same time last year.

Every media outpost from New York to Roanoke covered "Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving considered to be the official start of the holiday shopping season. The coverage has become standard: Hordes invade Wal-Mart as if they're running with the bulls at Pamplona (which is actually safer than shopping), exasperated store managers claim every year that "This is the best day we've had in five years" and fights break out between otherwise sane people over the latest xBox, Furby, Tickle Me Elmo, Cabbage Patch Kid, [insert other one-year-wonder toy here].

The stores that get mentioned in newspaper, radio and TV coverage are the same wherever you get your news. Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Circuit City and other big-box fortresses and shopping-mall chains.

Places you hardly ever see in your local "Black Friday" news coverage: locally owned stores in your downtown business district.

The reason the mom 'n' pop stores get ignored in coverage is simple. This is America. We don't buy as much stuff at Joe's Hardware or Sissy Lou's Collectibles as we do at the retailers housed in airport hangars. More than $200 billion will be spent over the next four weeks, most of it at the giant stores.

Last Friday, hundreds of people did not line up outside of Cantos Booksellers in Roanoke. Neither did they engage in brawls over the last LaserJet cartridge at Mish Mish in Blacksburg nor over a Pinot Noir at the Vintage Cellar in Radford. In fact, several businesses in our historic downtowns don't even bother to open on "Black Friday." It's just not worth it since everybody is hellbent for the malls.

That doesn't mean the mom 'n' pops can't survive and thrive. Unlike their behemoth competition, smaller, locally owned stores don't have to make 50 percent of their annual revenues during the three days that follow Thanksgiving. They don't have to increase their sales by double-digit percentages every year (although that would be nice). They don't rely on 50 percent discounts to get people to ransack their stores.

Small-business owners are in it for the long haul and they tend to do more business as the days count down toward Christmas. Once shoppers take advantage of all the sales at the big stores, they trickle into the smaller shops looking for off-the-beaten path gifts. Like the legend of the tortoise and the hare, slow and steady wins the race. Or, in this case, at least allows you to survive for another year.

For the past six or seven years, I have tried to do most of gift shopping at local merchants. It's fun, a challenge and it supports the local economy, which still depends on independent business owners to keep our communities vibrant and our tax coffers solvent.

The money isn't hauled off in big armored vehicles to out-of-state corporate moguls; the money circulates like life's blood through the veins and arteries of the local economy, from shopper to merchant to bank, then back into the community in the form of loans or mortgages.

Christmas shopping at downtown stores isn't always easy. If I decide to get a brand new iPod for my wife (don't worry, I'm not letting anything slip. She never reads my columns), I can't pick one up in downtown Radford. So, off to the big stores I go.

But maybe she would prefer a nice gift basket, a scarf or a book instead? I can find those items at numerous independent shops in the Roanoke and New River valleys.

Sunday afternoon, my wife bought a couple hundred dollars worth of gifts in downtown Blacksburg. A couple of the shops were doing brisk business, giving hope that even the independent businessman/woman can do well during the holidays.

Still, that iPod sounds like a mighty nice present. Sometimes, the lure of the big stores is irresistible, even for a guy who tries to avoid them like the avian flu.

Ralph Berrier Jr. has been with The Roanoke Times since 1993.