Holiday shopping kicked off Thursday afternoon and hundreds of shoppers took advantage of Christmas sales.

Local Belk store manager Eddie Carty said he had about 400 shoppers lined around the retail store for the special Thanksgiving Day hours, and on Friday shoppers began lining up before the early openings.

“We got here about 4:30 a.m.,” Chris Barnette said.

“My fiancée saw something that piqued her interest, and we thought we would come up here and check it out,” he said.

Barnette said he and Alisa Boyd came prepared to wait and even brought chairs to sit it until the doors opened at 6 a.m.

This year, Belk was also giving away $2 million in gift cards and one lucky winner from each of their stores was the recipient of $1,000 gift card during their Thursday afternoon opening and their early Friday morning opening.

Morgan Marble was Vicksburg’s Black Friday $1,000 winner.

Small businesses in Vicksburg also faired well during Small Business Saturday with multiple businesses reporting to Vicksburg Main Street executive director Kim Hopkins that their sales numbers were up Friday compared to last year, and into Saturday afternoon they were seeing big crowds.

“So far the merchants I’ve spoken to today said yesterday they had a really good day, and today we’ve had a lot of people downtown. I’ve seen a lot of Shop Small bags walking around. Everybody seems pleased,” Hopkins said of Paper Plus and Levee Street Marketplace.

Peterson’s Art & Antiques had a full staff on hand for the weekend shoppers, and Kim Ferris said the employees had seen large crowds.

Ferris added that some of their customers had even come from Jackson to avoid the massive crowds in the capital city.

That’s good news, and a great start to the shopping season in our city.