The numbers are in, and Christmas was good to Natchez and Vidalia.

The December sales taxes for both cities were significantly more than last year.

Natchez jumped from $537,208 in 2005 to $555,736 in 2006.

That’s good news, Natchez City Clerk Donnie Holloway said Monday.

“Evidently, Christmas buying was more than the year before,” Holloway said.

The jump was unexpected, especially since most of the influx of money as a result of Hurricane Katrina has mostly played out, he said.

“I was really surprised,” Holloway said. “I figured this year, if we even broke even, I’d be happy.”

That’s because November’s numbers were down 13 percent from the year before. Natchez might have Vidalia’s new Wal-Mart to thank for that, Holloway said.

But things are looking up. Sales taxes can often be an indicator of how well the economy is doing, he said.

“Whenever you see an increase in the sales tax, it means the economy is moving along and people are buying,” Holloway said.

But what people are buying can be difficult to say, Concordia Parish Sales Tax Collector Randy Temple said.

Vidalia’s high December numbers — from $135,436 in 2005 to $227,887 in 2006 — are thanks, in part, to Christmas sales. But another factor is construction.

“There is a lot of construction going on right now that wasn’t going on last year,” Temple said. “A lot of sales taxes on construction materials went into several complexes.”

Wal-Mart’s construction, development on the Vidalia Riverfront and building at the schools helped boost the numbers, he said.

“You can look month by month, year by year, and you can see a dramatic change,” Temple said.

Although construction sales taxes spend like any other kind, it will take some time to find out how much sales are increasing, Temple said.

“We have no way of isolating how much was actually from construction and how much was from retail sales,” Temple said. “When you have a surge in construction, it makes the sales numbers look kind of skewed. Six months down the road, we might be more able to tell the trend.”

While Natchez and Vidalia had a merry Christmas, Ferriday’s numbers dropped dramatically this December. In December 2005, Ferriday brought in $138,008, and reached $99,974 this past year.

Temple said he thought Wal-Mart’s move from Ferriday to Vidalia might have something to do with the shift in sales tax numbers.

He said he didn’t want to speculate on what sales might do in the future.

“Hopefully, there will be other retail businesses in Ferriday that will replace the loss of Wal-Mart, and we’ll see tax dollars steadily increase,” Temple said.