They held elaborate season-launching festivities with reindeer, Links of London Sale , free photos with Santa, the weekend after Thanksgiving. They promote themselves in newspapers, fliers, restaurant table signs and Facebook. Some of the groups are organized in districts that fit address clusters on Main Street or the small group of 10 intersection-oriented businesses, including Tangelder's, at Clarence Center and Goodrich Road. East Aurora's broader Chamber of Commerce created a news release list of seasonal happenings, highlighting its old-fashioned Main Street, including the 38th-annual caroling "Carolcade." Singing starts at 7 p.m. Saturday, complete with hot chocolate, doughnuts and Santa, in front of the expansive 80-year-old, five-and-dime "Vidler's" with its red-and-white striped awning. Inside the store, once featured in Martha Stewart magazine, shoppers have not spent as freely on butter dishes, pillows, stationery, lunch boxes and yo-yos the last two years. To encourage them, the owners have extended shop hours and worked to Links of London Rings more promotions themselves: A performance by a local group of women singers and a guitar. A local children's book author came to read. The Vidler's Facebook group page, with 713 members, gave this answer to a customer wondering if snow would get in the way of her shopping earlier this month: "Not bad at all. Roads and parking lot are all clear," wrote Don Vidler, whose online photo is a smiling close-up. "I think we've had to market more than ever," he said. To Williamsville shop owner Joan Ess, it also seems clear that this year things are working. The shoppers who sustain her are more willing to spend $30 on whimsical ornament fruits with faces and chunky $100 gemstone necklaces in amethyst and citrine. "I can see it getting better," said Ess, owner of Alexandra gifts. "People are spending more money, buying quality gifts instead of 50 little ones." This year, the Williamsville association attracted more people and expanded on its annual weekend winter festivities -- from adding trolley rides up and down Main and movie showings to a horse-drawn wagon and Santa Claus pictures. "It was the biggest crowd we Links of London Snowflake Charms had," Ess said. "We just know we have to go that extra mile here ... Everybody is trying to make sure there's something for all budgets." In Hamburg, Heather Sidorowicz worked with the Village Business Advisory Council to coordinate a later shopping night on Thursdays until Christmas. Local restaurants feature table signs that say, "8 weeks open til 8" and "Please remember to shop local!" At Southtown Audio Video on Lake Street, where Sidorowicz works as a project manager, business has picked up since the slow summer season. Usually during the holidays, new customers come for televisions and stereos. This year, business has been distinguished by old customers returning to add sound and televisions to secondary rooms -- dens and bedrooms -- beyond the basic great room, now already outfitted. "We're always, on a daily basis, fighting the big corporate, online stores," she said. "If you spend online, nothing comes home." To Tangelder, she and her fellow shopkeepers who sell stationery, haircuts and cafe fare, are a kind of oasis, trying to re-create some of what shopping may have been Links of London Star of David Charm when the building she's in first opened in the 1870s with a general store, a meeting room and theater.
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