Nov 2, 2008

Holiday towns, Christmas, Holly, Frankenmuth, offer high-spirited shoppingBy Kim SchneiderMLive.com

Christmas, MI — Whatever your holiday budget, you won’t feel Scrooge-like for long when shopping in Michigan’s most over-the-top holiday destinations.

Just be prepared for the unexpected when exploring the towns of Christmas and Holly on streets such as Jingle Bell Lane. Jokester street actors may haul you off to pick-pocket school. Or snow might fall on your head — indoors. All of this adds to the fun of the gift-buying experience, which in these locales is anything but generic.

Mary Woods, of Suttons Bay, based herself at a cozy rental named Evergreen Cottage to shop the tiny Upper Peninsula town of Christmas. And she left Santa’s Workshop Gift Shop (E8035 St. Nicholas Ave.) with a host of what she called functional but unique finds. Among them: a toy nutcracker for a son’s collection, a trivet in the shape of the U.P. for a friend with a vacation cottage, a silver charm of tiny mittens (for herself), a hat for a snowmobiling friend and a stack of kitchen towels shaped like doll dresses for her sisters-in-law.

She considered homemade spiced fig soap and wine charms fashioned as fuzzy slippers and Santa boots, she says, but saved the rest of her shopping for the galleries and boutiques in nearby Munising — the base for the rest of a mini-vacation getaway. One highlight was meeting the artists whose work she bought.

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