Enjoying Christmas Despite the Tough Times | Print | E-mail
Written by Charles Scaliger
Friday, 18 December 2009 09:30

For the third December in a row, Americans enter the holiday season with an economy in shambles.

Whether or not the self-anointed arbiters of economic cycles declare the recession to have officially ended — as many hopeful economists are now claiming — in the third quarter of this year, more than 10 percent of Americans remain unemployed and the job market continues to contract. The U.S. dollar is in steep decline against gold and various foreign currencies, and concerns abound that further unwinding of an overvalued and overleveraged real-estate market is in the offing. Bank closures continue apace, and federal and state government debts continue to spiral to unexampled heights. Regardless of what official measures of economic health may indicate, the economic time of troubles that America and most of the rest of the world entered two Decembers ago is likely to persist for some time to come.

All of which means that Christmas, at least as this generation of Americans knows it, is likely to be different for the foreseeable future. Indebtedness, inflation, high unemployment, and unrelentingly high taxes are putting the squeeze on household budgets as has not been seen in decades. As a consequence, the lavish Christmases and exorbitant spending on extravagant gifts are a thing of the past for many households. Retailers have seen steep declines in sales the last two holiday seasons, and will likely see more of the same in 2009.

Yet Americans have enjoyed Christmases in hard times before. Christmas as we celebrate it nowadays is a comparatively recent invention, dating from the mid-19th century. Since the celebration of Yuletide became a national holiday during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, America has suffered two world wars, a Great Depression, and numerous other panics and recessions, some of which, like the Panic of 1907 and the recessionary 1970s, have permanently altered our country’s economic landscape. But throughout, Christmas has grown in vitality and popularity both at home and abroad. In our day, it is easily the most important holiday (and holy-day), surpassing all others both in cultural and economic impact; not even the ongoing Great Recession is likely to make any difference either in Americans’ love affair with this holiday or with the spirit that it ultimately represents.

This author came of age during the 1970s, a time of unremitting economic malaise. Early in the decade, the United States, which had printed vast sums of money to finance the Vietnam War, decided to take the dollar off the international gold standard. There followed high rates of inflation coupled with economic stagnation (“stagflation,â€