With Christmas now gone, retailers both locally and nationally are saying the holiday shopping season was a success.

On the national scale, holiday shopping was up 3.6 percent between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24 as compared with last year, according to figures from MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse.

In Austin, it’s a little too early to determine how individual stores did, but several people in the business sector said they feel like it was a good season.

“Retailers I talked to were fairly well satisfied,” said Sandy Forstner, executive director of the Austin Area Chamber of Commerce.

Forstner said this included smaller stores as well as larger chains, like Target.

Sara Wundrow, who became the Austin Target store manager in August, said it was a productive holiday shopping season at her store.

“We definitely had a successful November and December,” she said.

However, a heavy snow storm that hit Austin just days before Christmas altered shopping patterns a bit. Wundrow said she saw more customers than usual making their final holiday purchases several days to a week before Christmas, knowing that getting to the store would be difficult with all the snow.

She also said these shoppers stocked up not only on gifts, but essential food items as well in preparation for the possibility of being snowed in.

With the skies clear again, Wundrow said post-Christmas shopping has been as heavy as usual, with customers coming for the deals, including 75 percent off holiday merchandise.

“It’s been a busy couple of days,” Wundrow said Monday.

Steve Musel, manager at the Sterling Main Street shopping center in Austin, also said the weather slowed shopping some, although he noted it was an overall good season.

Musel said he thinks shoppers are slowly beginning to regain consumer confidence amid the economic recession.

“Yeah, I think people are starting to think things are looking up,” he said.

Forstner agreed.

“I think people are feeling a little more confident, and they’re showing it by going to stores,” he said.

Michael McNamara, vice president at MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse, said the economy was in “critical condition” last year.

“This year, it’s in stable condition,” he said.

Online sales definitely helped, as they were up 15.5 percent on the season. However, they make up less than 10 percent of all retail sales.

SpendingPulse also identified consumer electronics, footwear and jewelry as some of the biggest sellers during the season. Each were up by at least 5 percent from last year.

But the true sign of whether this holiday season can be classified as a success may have yet to come — last year, the week after Christmas accounted for 15 percent of overall holiday sales, according to ShopperTrak, a research firm.

“Things don’t just stop on Christmas Eve,” Musel said.