This season, turn fiction to reality the 'Wobegon' way

All I want for Christmas is to live in Lake Wobegon.

It's a fictional place where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking and all the children are above average."

Only in the halls of Congress would anyone think it's real. Congress has actually written into law that every child will test above average in the year of our Lord 2014. Woe be unto us, cry our strong and good-looking politicians, if any child be left behind.

Meanwhile, back in reality, Lake Wobegon exists only in the mind of Garrison Keillor, who charms us with the "News from Lake Wobegon" every Saturday on his radio show, "A Prairie Home Companion."

He leads our imaginations into the Chatterbox Cafe, "The place to go that's just like home," or down to the Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Catholic Church.

Sometimes we settle in at the Moonlight Bay Supper Club, or slide by the Sidetrack Tap, run by Wally and Evelyn, "The dim little place in the dark where the pinball machine never tilts, the clock is a half-hour slow, and where love never dies."

But on this very day, Lake Wobegon can become real as pluff mud right here in Beaufort County.

They call today Black Friday, a horrid name for the day after Thanksgiving, which has become the door-buster special for the Christmas shopping season.

From today's jostling for bargains through the secret midnight runs on Christmas Eve, each of us has the magical power to bring a sliver of Lake Wobegon to life.

Lake Wobegon, you may recall, also is home to Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery. And Keillor says it advertises, "If you can't find it at Ralph's, you can probably get along without it."

This Christmas, if you can't find a gift in Beaufort, or on Hilton Head Island, or in Bluffton, Lady's Island, Frogmore, Ridgeland, Hardeeville, Yemassee, Okatie or Pritchardville, you can absolutely get along without it.

These stores and restaurants are the ones supporting our PTAs, rec teams, arts, charities and tax bases. They provide jobs and paychecks -- here, where it helps us all.

But our local merchants and entrepreneurs also nurture our imagination. They are our own saltwater version of Keillor's duck-hunting Sons of Canute or sleepwalking Lundbergs.

It's just that they are not fiction. They are us.

In tight times, the best gift we can give each other is to support each other. We can spend what we have at home. And it's true: If you can't find it here, you don't need it.

If we're not smart enough to figure that out, well, we're all below average.