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.

“That is small-town heaven,” she said. “And if anybody wants a Zen yoga retreat, forget the spa. Go to Munising for the waterfalls.”

Christmas

Comparisons between the North Pole and Christmas are apt, particularly once the snow flies. Three-story cutouts lining Highway 28 make Santa and Mrs. Claus hard to miss. And like the North Pole, this town was based around a toy factory (which closed in 1940), and it still serves as the unofficial state headquarters for letters to Santa.

Any child who sends a Santa letter here is pretty much guaranteed a reply, personally penned by the staff of Santa’s Workshop (santas-workshop-christmas.com). Even more popular is the official Christmas postmark applied to cards mailed from the store.

But before posting your cards, head a few miles east to the Falling Rock Cafe and Bookstore in Munising. Here, you can buy local and holiday-themed photo cards such as a pine laden with snow and a smiley face ornament and write greetings while sipping a cinnamon latte or shopping from the 50,000 new and used books. Other notable shops include Munising Wood Products, headquarters for popular locally made antique wooden bowls and kitchen items, and Open Wings Pottery Studio and Gallery. Here, shoppers can watch Thomas Baugnet throwing (and selling) his functional pottery or pick up jewelry fashioned from local stones or delicate origami cranes.

Photo by Jimmie Presley.Amy Seaman, left, of Clarkston, helps a fellow performer dress for the part as the Festival Singers perform “A Christmas Carol” during the annual Holly Dickens Festival in Holly.
Holly

If you feel as if you’ve fallen into a Dickens novel as you shop downtown Holly, near Flint, that’s no accident. Every year, dozens of townspeople take part in an ongoing improvisational play and festival held weekends in December through Christmas. That makes it likely you’ll shop the Victorian-era storefronts amid Ebenezer Scrooge, Charles Dickens and Queen Victoria. You may even get tapped to play Big Ben, enlisted into a game of Haul-a-Maid or swept up by the marching Chimney Sweeps.

Local re-enactor Ken Giorlando will play Dickens in a spoof on the penning of “A Christmas Carol” as well as other characters in skits performed throughout the month. At some point, he says, he’ll make time to shop for Civil War-era antiques amid the town’s 58 galleries and boutiques. Among them is the popular Battle Alley Arcade Antiques mall, a 19th-century street of shops and home to 25 antique dealers. Many visitors include a stop for Victorian tea at the historic Holly Hotel.

The whole scene puts you in the mood for shopping, Giorlando says, with wandering carolers and street vendors who sell wares such as roasted chestnuts, penny-whistles and English-style fish and chips.

“I have people say it’s not Christmas until they come to the Holly Dickens Festival,” he says. “That makes you feel like a million dollars.”

Frankenmuth

Transportation by horse and carriage, hundreds of twinkling lights and the distinctive German heritage from which many Christmas traditions originated combine to make Frankenmuth the perfect holiday shopping destination. But all it would need is Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland, one of the nation’s largest Christmas stores.

Even those who “have it all” can’t have each of the 50,000 holiday-related items you’ll find at any given time at the Frankenmuth complex. The unusual ornaments (6,000 styles in all) are among the most popular gift items, said spokesperson Lori Lipka.

The thrifty on the holiday list might appreciate the $6.99 ornament that reads “Never pass up a garage sale,” while Francophiles would enjoy the replicas of the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame or the Louvre. Gift recipients also may recognize their bounty on the big screen, for Bronner’s is where Hollywood has turned for dozens of movies, among them “The Santa Clause 3,” “Jingle All the Way,” “Jack Frost” and “Spiderman 2.”

The town is at its most festive during the annual holiday lighting ceremony, held annually the Friday after Thanksgiving and notable for caroling, a lighting ceremony and the reading of “The Christmas Story.”

Shoppers overwhelmed by the gift options can find solace in the Silent Night Memorial Chapel, a replica of Austria’s St. Nicholas Church, where the hymn “Silent Night” first was sung. A tape of various groups singing the hymn plays continuously inside the Frankenmuth venue.

And from June through September, it snows for two minutes every half hour at the store’s west entrance.

“Kids even stick their tongues out (to catch the flakes),” Lipka says. “It’s not the real thing, but it won’t hurt them.”

Holiday towns

Christmas: Evergreen Cottage (www.hiawathashideaway.com, 906-387-1633), which comes with gas fireplace and sleeps 8, or stay in nearby Munising (www.munising.org). Shop (and postmark holiday cards from) Santa’s Workshop, santas-workshop-christmas.com.

Holly: Shop downtown boutiques and antique stores, especially memorable during the Dickens Festival (2-7 p.m. Dec. 6-7; Dec. 13-14; and Dec. 20-21), mainstreetholly.com/dickens. Stay at the Holly Crossing Bed and Breakfast, hollybandb.com, (800) 556-2262.

Frankenmuth: Shopping Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland and Village can take all weekend, www.bronners.com, but also explore the Bavarian-style town of Frankenmuth, frankenmuth.org. Lodging options include the family-friendly Zehnder’s Splash Village Hotel and Waterpark, zehnders.com, (800) 863-7999.

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