In terms of holiday spending, it has not yet started to look like Christmas in Tombstone.

“People don’t generally do their Christmas shopping in Tombstone,” said Robert Carreira, director of the Cochise College Center for Economic Research. “The town never really sees a spike around the holidays.”

Merchants around town have seen this same trend and have accepted it as just something that goes along with living and doing business in Tombstone.

“People tend to go to malls for shopping,” Susan Cattany, owner of Casa Paloma, said. “But if they want unique gifts, they’ll come to Tombstone.”

Cattany and her small, furry co-owner, Rosie, have been selling tourists and locals alike gifts that celebrate Tombstone’s Mexican heritage for about 5 1/2 years. In that time, she said she has noticed a certain pattern in holiday shopping.

“More locals will come in as it gets closer to the holidays,” she said, “but the tourists are looking year-round.” So, even though it may be slow once November rolls in, the tourists have been buying their gifts months ahead of time.

“I always hear things like ‘This’ll be a great Christmas present for Jeremy’ even in February,” she said with a laugh. “When people come here on their vacations, they’re always thinking ahead and buying gifts for their families.”

Carreira said this information is shown in his data because, per capita, Tombstone fares well with sales during the rest of the year in terms of retail sales, whereas bigger communities like Sierra Vista see the jump around Thanksgiving.

“I need to do something to get more people in the store,” said Hal Cloughley, owner of Cochise Trading Co. “I just don’t know what.” A nervous chuckle escaped him as he again pondered different strategies possible for his business.

For the time being, Cloughley said he hopes to bring in more locals to buy his store’s jewelry, expanding his clientele beyond the tourists who around year-round.

“There just isn’t good business in Tombstone now since the recession hit,” he said. “I think all stores are in the same boat.”

His business, which specializes in jewelry, still gets enough business to stay afloat, but it could always do better, he said.

Carreira said that business owners should not hope for a quick turn around from the fall in the economy, though, and they will have to forge through a bit more tough times before the effects of the recession have fully disappeared.

“Nationally there are signs of recovery, but not enough to make small tourist towns like Tombstone feel it,” he said. “Overall, it isn’t looking too good.”

Since tourism is a luxury after all, it is one of the last things people are willing to spend their money on, he said.

“Couple that with gas prices nowadays and it’s hard for some people to get the money to travel,” he said.

Money will have to be saved up before families will really start spending it on goods and services that are not needed, and for that to happen, there will already have to be money going around, he noted.

“We can expect it to crawl along,” Carreira said. “Optimistically, the markets will be back up in 2013.”