BRECKENRIDGE – Welcoming customers at the storefront of Breckenridge Spice Merchants, a family of life-sized gingerbread men are hard at work baking holiday treats. In the front window of the Breckenridge Bead Gallery a sparkling array of crafted and paper snowflakes hover over frosted Christmas trees of Aspen bark and a group of wood-carved forest animals.

They’re just a few of the 30 holiday window displays that Breckenridge shops and museums entered in Saturday’s first-ever Breckenridge retail merchants holiday window competition.

Merchants in Breckenridge decked out their windows to ring in the start of the holiday shopping season and invited shoppers to get involved in the friendly competition. For a $5 donation visitors received three tickets which they could use to vote for their favorite window displays as they spent the day shopping.

Winners were announced Saturday night at a party at the Motherloaded Tavern where a two-night stay in Breckenridge, a gift basket and other prizes were raffled off to customers who purchased tickets.

At press time the winning window had not yet been determined.

The money raised will benefit the Breckenridge Heritage Alliance, but the event itself was also intended to benefit the independent local shops in Breckenridge, by helping them get a festive and successful start to the shopping season.

“Really what I wanted to achieve with it was (to) get more people walking up and down Main Street, more people in some of the shops at the north end,” said Sheri Shelton, who owns Hand and Glove on Main Street and helped organized the contest. “It’s a fun tradition. For most people it brings a smile to their face instantly.” The event was produced by the Breckenridge Merchants Association.

Participation both from shops and customers was good for the event’s first year, Shelton said. Some merchants began working on their window displays as early as a week before the contest. The display at Peek-a-Boo Toys was interactive.

“The Breckenridge merchants have done a really great job of coming together, making this event, giving a good reason for people to get out and shop locally with all the great stores we have in here in Breckenridge,” said Rachel Zerowin, a spokeswoman for the Breckenridge Resort Chamber.

Independent businesses return at least three times more money to the local economy than chain businesses do, according to the Summit Independent Business Alliance.

SDN reporter Caddie Nath can be contacted at (970) 668-4628 or at cnath@summitdaily.com.