PORT TOWNSEND — While many downtown merchants felt that Christmas sales were down a bit from last year, most said it was a good shopping season.

“It started off strong after Thanksgiving but then dropped off for a few weeks, but we had a really strong Christmas Eve,” said Artisans on Taylor owner Anna Nasset.

“Jewelry was the biggest seller, although I was pleased

to see that some people were

buying paintings.”

Gail Boulter, owner of the Clothes Horse and Northwest Man, said that patronage from residents kept sales up.

“We really appreciate the local business,” Boulter said.

“Because of that, we had an OK season, even though sales seems like it was down a bit from last year.”

In Port Hadlock, Hadlock Building Supply co-owner Elena Lovato-Kraut said the store set up a gift shop where employees sold their craft items.

This brought a lot of people in, she said, and many would go on to purchase more traditional Christmas gifts like power tools.

One of the most popular items was a squeaking-pig dog chew toy, which was sold to a lot of people who didn’t even have a dog.

William Metzer, who owns William’s Gallery, noticed a last-minute rush.

“People have been holding off all year. Now they are doing something,” he said last weekend.

“We are selling more jewelry and clothing, things they can use rather than something they can put on the wall where it looks pretty.”

Metzer said the downtown stores hoped to make enough during Christmas to sustain them through the lean winter months leading up to the warmer months, with their influx of tourists — something he said his store accomplished this year.

‘Great season’

“We’ve had a great season,” said Elevated Ice Cream owner Julie McCullough.

“We had two straight years of bad weather and construction,” she said.

“This year, we’ve had really good weather and it’s been a lot better.”

While ice cream isn’t a gift item, “a lot of people are out shopping, celebrating and having a good time so they come in and eat ice cream,” she said.

Elevated is a gift destination because of its varied candy selection and because its ice cream gift cards are popular, she said.

Completely Puzzled and Whistle Stop Toys both reported a good month.

Completely Puzzled owner Susan Atkins said she expected that many people would wait until after Christmas to spend a lot of money, but that her shelves were “almost empty” Monday.

“A lot of people were putting off getting presents, so on Christmas Eve, I could gift wrap a hammer and someone would buy it,” she said.

“A lot of the husbands would wake up on Christmas Eve morning and go ‘ooops,’ and you could sell them anything.”

Whistle Stop Toys owner Steve Goldenbogen, who opened his store on Christmas Eve 2010, said he sold a lot of Lego sets because “it is an open-ended construction system that a lot of people can relate to.”

Goldenbogen said that remote control helicopters were the one item that he could not keep in stock.

Several merchants reported that scarves were big sellers because one size fits all and there is a variety of color and style choices.

“We did well on Christmas Eve but the rest of December was pretty lackadaisical,” said Robin McCann, a member of the Gallery 9 artist cooperative.

“This year was down from the last year, which was down from the year before that; ever since the Bush depression, things have gotten a little worse each year.”

Hannah Buckman, co-owner of the Big Wolf Trading Co., said that sage and sweetgrass were big sellers in her shop.

“These spiritual items of purification were very popular, and we sold the most of the items that we made ourselves,” she said.

Sport Townsend owner Susan Jacob said the store’s receipts are up 6 percent this year and that it did “really well” for the holidays.

Clothes with the “smart wool” brand were very popular, she said.

“We sold a lot of the smart wool socks, because they are made differently and can be worn by people who couldn’t wear wool before because it irritated their skin.”

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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.