In tough economic times, many families look for a way to reframe the season.

Nov.29, 2008 in Market Outlook

SUSAN McCABE liked to go all out for Christmas. Presents for friends and 17 relatives: high-end cameras for adults, Nintendo Wii for the children. On Christmas Eve, she proudly treated the immediate family to dinner at romantic white tablecloth restaurants in Manhattan. Sticker shock? Ms. McCabe, who sold eco-friendly technology, wouldn’t blink twice.

But in September, the start-up company she worked for went belly up.

A restaurant dinner? All those presents?

“Out of the question,” said Ms. McCabe, who is scrambling to make the rent on her Manhattan apartment. “And that really bothers me.”

In solidarity, Ms. McCabe’s sister, Robin, a lawyer, suggested a familywide ban on gifts for the adults. Then, to strike a tone more seemly for the times and her little sister’s circumstances, Robin reshaped her annual Brooklyn Heights holiday party: the sparkly, dressy affair will be a potluck gathering with a charitable component. It will feature clothing from Goods of Conscience, a new line sewn by Bronx seamstresses using fabric woven by Guatemalan women, who share in the profit.

Many people have a narrative about their holiday rituals: the worship, the setting, the food, the gifts, the personae, the drama. But this year, the economy is rudely tearing apart those yellowed scripts.

For millions, this is the first time they are compelled to scale back and reframe their holiday traditions.

Many must do so out of unaccustomed need and shame, some out of prudent apprehension. Others, like Robin McCabe, are retooling their annual blowouts in deference to those harder hit. The negotiations can be painful. At what cost preserving holiday magic for the children? The conversations are awkward not only for those who have lost their jobs but also for friends and relatives as they trip on that fine line between sensitive and patronizing.

But Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Year’s all honor light in a dark season. Perhaps that is why people around the country, in describing how they are adjusting celebrations this year, speak of finding the upbeat in the downbeat — at least until the last scrap of wrapping paper is tossed.

Throughout middle-class Delaware County in suburban Columbus, Ohio, members of Liberty Presbyterian Church who once donated generously at Christmas now find themselves in the devastating position of having to receive, said Rev. Rebecca Hart, a pastor at the church. It was no accident that the Christmas recollections submitted for this year’s Advent calendar almost all speak to simpler, less extravagant times: The shoebox from home for a lonely sailor, filled with chocolates, a music cassette and a miniature Nativity scene; a father’s homemade carving of outdoor, life-size carolers; the year a defiant 10-year-old daughter refused the role of Mary in the Sunday School pageant, preferring Gabriel instead. (Bigger speaking part.)

“If you say, ‘We can’t afford to do the big Christmas this year,’ ” Ms. Hart said, “that makes you feel like you failed. But if you say you’re returning to your roots, to the Christmas of your grandparents, that’s powerful, that’s positive. That’s face-saving.”

Certainly many are recasting these pared-down celebrations as a return to the true meaning of the holidays. And although railing about commercialism has been a fine American tradition since at least 1965, when Charlie Brown first rescued that flimsy little evergreen, this is the year that hand- wringing and reality may finally meet.

Telling others that gifts, of necessity, will be modest is a ticklish business. Ellen Wachtel, a family therapist in Manhattan, said one-upmanship around presents is often frontloaded with unspoken tension, but the economy now gives cover to a blunt conversation. “You can say, ‘Please don’t give my kid such an elaborate gift because I can’t reciprocate.’ ”

Many of the newly affected choose to maintain their game faces by saying that simpler is not necessarily better. Just temporary.

more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/fashion/30laidoff.html?_r=1&ref=business

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