Holiday Trimming

By Pamela Paul

'Tis the season--and it has been since October The 12 days of Christmas have overflowed into three months, unleashing the holiday spirit and its attendant commercial blitz well before Halloween. Whether one celebrates Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or something else, those who haven't composed laundry lists of gifts and begun to deck the halls by November are considered downright Scroogish.

Bah, humbug, says Cori Pursell, 45, a mother of two from Overland Park, Kans. For the past six years, she and her husband have made a concerted effort to rein in the holiday hoopla. "Rather than focus on the shopping calendar of Christmas, we're focusing on the spiritual aspect," Pursell explains. "We've decided to not even put up a tree until the third week of Advent, and we don't decorate it until the week before Christmas." Other holiday trappings have gone out the window altogether. Several years ago, the couple stopped swathing the house in knickknacks and frills. This year, they're eliminating Christmas lights. Gift purchases have also been reduced. Instead of giving presents to every last cousin and aunt, they give charitable donations in the names of a few close relatives. The Dear Santa lists made by their two sons, ages 3 and 8, are limited to three gifts each.

But the Pursells' revamped holiday celebration isn't just about taking things away. It's about adding things--meaning, closeness, spirituality. The family has gone caroling at a local nursing home and visited a soup kitchen. "What influenced my husband and me was thinking back to what we enjoyed about Christmas growing up," Pursell explains. "It was never the number or size of toys we received or how many cookies my mom baked. It was about family being together and observing the holiday. That togetherness creates the warmest, most lasting memories."

Pursell has not only recalibrated her celebration, but she also helps others do the same. Last year she started a "simplicity circle" that gets into high gear during the holiday season. A woman in her group, a Buddhist, has eliminated toys with batteries or ones made of plastic from her secular celebration in an attempt to introduce her children to simpler pleasures. Another, an environmentalist, won't give any gifts that aren't made from recycled or natural sources. Others, following Pursell's example, have cut back on the tonnage of tinsel and toys.

There are signs that Americans, in general, are looking to pare back the excesses of Decembers past. When Gallup polled 1,000 adults last year about their projected holiday spending, the average estimate was $776. Although that's not exactly a Bob Cratchit budget, it's down from an average of $857 in 1999. One in 5 people planned to spend less than they did the year before.

While part of that may reflect an uncertain economy, some appears to be driven by a desire for sanity. "Most people want a season less rushed and less pressured, where they wake up feeling a little more magic," says Betsy Taylor, president of New American Dream, a nonprofit that runs a website called SimplifytheHolidays.org A 2002 survey by Taylor's organization found that 77% of adults polled said they wanted a "more simplified" holiday season. "We went through a period where everything had to be Martha Stewart perfect," Taylor explains, "but now there's a countertrend where people want to spend less time trying to find a parking space at the mall and more time actually enjoying the holiday with loved ones."

Such cutbacks make sense, says Tim Kasser, a professor of psychology at Knox College in Illinois, who studies materialism and values. For a 2002 paper titled "What Makes for a Merry Christmas?" Kasser interviewed 117 people in Illinois, asking them to weigh eight factors in their holiday experience. "Being close to family and friends" was measured against "practicing my religion," "helping others in need" and "eating and/or drinking well." The two factors most closely tied to holiday happiness: family and religion. The two factors most closely linked to dissatisfaction? Giving and receiving gifts.

Last year, Brin Wisdom, 25, and a group of seven college friends in Dallas got sick of trying to outdo one another with presents. So they decided to skip the shopping and donate to a local humane society. Each set up boxes in her workplace to collect food, toys and blankets for needy animals. Instead of their usual gift-exchange party, the friends piled $2,000 worth of donations into several cars and distributed them at the shelter. "The animals were going nuts," Wisdom recalls. "We never anticipated how emotional it would be. It ended up being the most rewarding holiday experience we've ever had." This year they're looking forward to taking canned goods to the North Texas Food Bank. "Instead of seeing Christmas as just another social hour, we did something meaningful together," Wisdom explains. "It's really refreshing to take the focus off our lives, our bank accounts and our shopping lists to step into another world."

You can add meaning in your own world as well. Some families rein in the gift frenzy and gain treasured time together by chipping in for a family ski trip or beach vacation. According to the Knox study, people reported having happier holidays when they instituted environmentally friendly practices like using a live Christmas tree or eliminating wrapping paper. Bill McKibben, author of Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case for a More Joyful Christmas, suggests making presents or giving the gift of time, offering to help a sibling with homework or to pay for ballet lessons.

But simplifying isn't always so simple. What one couple decides may not sit well with extended family or with their kids (see box). Three years ago, Noelle Hawton of Bloomington, Minn., was driving to church on Christmas Eve with her husband and his family when they passed a homeless man digging a plate out of a Dumpster. "It made me think about how stupid it was to be stressed out over gifts that none of us really needed," Hawton recalls. That night, she and her in-laws had a long, emotional discussion and chose to stop exchanging gifts the following year. Instead, they adopted a needy family for the holidays and spent a day buying presents for them. Hawton would love to extend the practice to her side of the family, but so far her efforts have failed, and so have other attempts at moderation. One year, her family agreed to limit gift purchases to $15, but everyone panicked, and some overstepped the limit. Another year, they all brought generic gifts and played a dice game to determine who got what--a disaster. This year, for the first time, there will be no gifts among the adults, with one exception. Just as she did last Christmas, Hawton plans to give her parents membership to "Noelle's Soup of the Month Club." Each month, she'll invite them over for a homemade soup dinner. "It gets them out of the house and here spending time with their grandkids," Hawton explains. And it's one way to create memories that last well beyond Christmas Day.