Well, according to the American Research Group, Inc., 1,100 adults were sampled to find that they will be spending half as much this year, $431, for loved ones. In 2007, $859 was spent; in 2006, $907; in 2005, $942; in 2004, $1,004; in 2003, after we declared victory in Iraq, $976; and so on.

Check the numbers and ask yourself if the “sampled adults” loved their loved ones less or more in any of those years? One fact’s for sure, we’re talking about billions of dollars, made or lost, all of it propping up retail, travel, direct-mail sales, supermarket, restaurant, Christmas trees and decoration sales businesses. Merry Christmas, consumers!

Of course, we’re all typically driving ourselves crazy to prove how much we love our loved ones at Christmas (and not just Christians) by buying, buying, buying. My late father once told me his Italian immigrant parents gave the six kids gifts of food for Christmas, figs, nuts, oranges, in their own stockings, and after that, a good dinner. And they were happy as hell, pop said, to get it, because they were hungry so often.

Also, where is it written that love equates with money-spent-on-love-object? After all, Christmas is Jesus’ birthday and the Three Wise Men brought a few small gifts but that was it. As to Mary and Joseph, they found a manger to stay in that didn’t take AmEx but was given from someone’s generosity.

Yet we all know that the day after Thanksgiving, as at a track meet, someone will fire a shot, and the crowds will be running until Christmas Eve, shopping until they drop or go broke, and into major credit card debt, whether or not they can pay it. There will more planes with fewer amenities (like food) than ever in the sky, trains on the rails, cars on the road, zooming to relatives around the country on or before Christmas than ever. If we don’t go to the grandparents or Aunt Lucille’s, we’ll be hurting their feelings, and more if we asked them to move closer to us, so we could walk a few blocks to their houses like in the old days.

But if we spent less or next to nothing on Christmas does it mean we love Jesus less (at least you Christians); do we love our family or friends less; have we lost the flame for our mates? Can we just come together and be satisfied? And spare those millions of Christmas trees from getting the axe for us to sniff their fragrant pine scent for a few days or weeks of the season?

In fact, can we lay off Santa as a marketer and keep him as an icon of the spirit of giving? Can we bag the elves as measures of GDP and just have them as happy symbols. And what about the power to light all those gaudy communities, from coast to coast, house after house, with endless lights, that proclaim their joy? Can we save that energy joyfully? Especially since healthcare professionals tell us, all that lit-up cheeriness provides a major time for depression, suicides, alcohol-driven road-accidents, to mention a few of consumption’s catastrophes.

Is it possible or is it heresy or sheer “Scrooge-ism” to have a gift-free Christmas, or well, say up to five bucks, okay, 10 bucks a head? Just thinking about this is causing me pain and anxiety. Yet think of all we could save on packaging, wrapping paper, ribbon, postage, and garbage truck-time to haul away the aftermath.

By the way, a friend of mine, a photographer, last Christmas happened to be in a nouveau rich MacMansion neighborhood in New Jersey. He was photographing one house in particular late Christmas afternoon. It had more cartons, gift wrappings for every conceivable gift imaginable at the overflowing garbage cans than most small town dumps or the dumpsters of your average super-size Wal-Mart.

My buddy was snapping pictures of the garbage when a woman came out of the house and asked him what he was doing? Well, it was obvious. He was taking pictures of the volume of her garbage. She turned tiger and said, “Get outta here quick, before I call the cops.” He had pushed a big button. After all, MacMansion equals big money that equals big love for big family. Or does it? Do the people living in working class neighborhoods in the burbs or tenements in the cities, where the garbage post-Christmas is seriously less, love each other less? Or just that they have less to spend, or, god help them, nothing to spend.

And this Christmas, given the “Scroogey” state of the economy, which seems like it’s out to get each one of us personally, via lay-off, firing, huge losses in savings, portfolios, homes, personal assets, political sell-outs like NAFTA, CAFTA, Halliburton, etcetera, will we have permission to scale down gift-giving without scaling up on guilt?

Well, I think of my all-time favorite Christmas movie, It’s A Wonderful Life, written originally as a short story by Philip Van Doren Stern (who must have been a genius) and directed by Frank Capra, starring James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Jimmy Hawkins. It came out in 1946, a year after WW II ended, a blessed time, when we are all enjoying the greatest gifts of having our boys (fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, cousins, neighbors), back home, the world in one piece (more or less) and just being alive. I was 8 years old. Wow, let’s go roll some snowballs.

It was very different Christmas from one of the worst ones ever, in December 1941, after the Japanese had invaded Pearl Harbor on the 7th and all the “boys” were sent off to fight and nobody knew what the next day would bring. Nevertheless, Wiki, at the above link will give you 13 pages about It’s a Wonderful Life, but I’ll give you a shorter summary.

It’s a wonderful story

Our hero, George Bailey (James Stewart) has spent his entire life giving of himself to the people of Bedford Falls. He has always longed to travel but never had the opportunity in order to prevent the rich skinflint, Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), who could be Henry Paulson, from taking over the entire town. All that prevents Potter from doing so is George’s modest building and loan company, which was founded by his generous father. Even then, building and loan companies could make or break people or towns. Back then, they mostly made them.

Nevertheless, on Christmas Eve, George’s Uncle Billy loses the business’s $8,000 while intending to deposit it in the bank. Potter finds the misplaced money and hides it from Billy. He would have made a great neocon, even a Fed head. When the bank examiner discovers the shortage later that night, George realizes that he will be held responsible and sent to jail and the company will collapse, finally allowing Potter to take over the town. This dear man actually sweated that, even if it was just a movie. It was how people felt.

Bailey thinks of his wife, their young children, and others he loves who will be better off with him dead. He contemplates suicide. But the collective prayers of his loved ones cause a gentle angel named Clarence to descend to earth to help George. For this, George will earn his wings, quid pro quo if ever. Clarence shows George what things would have been like if he had never been born. In a kind of nightmare, in which the Potter-controlled town is sunk in sex and sin, the people that George loves are dead, ruined or miserable. His wife (Donna Reed) is a lonely spinster.

After reliving how life would have been without him, George comes back to the bridge and calls upon Clarence and to god to let him live again. His wish is granted. And with his new knowledge of a past without him, he returns to his real home and life. He find his friends and family have collected a great deal of money to save George and the Building & Loan (a bailout of pure love) from ruin and scandal. Seeing what a difference his life has made and how he did touch people, including Clarence to earn his wings, George Bailey realizes that with all of its problems he has a wonderful life.

So maybe there’s a lesson here about good and bad bankers, good and bad loan and building companies, good and bad people, and counting on the good ones to win as long as they hang in. Neither Christmas nor life is about getting tons of gifts, but about the gift of life, love, friendship, and family that come with being here, even if you’re born like Jesus in a mere manger.

Nor is being here about outrageous bonuses and screwing the other guy, but about caring for the other guy and getting the enormous bonus of community that brings. In fact, Stern’s original story was called The Greatest Gift. And perhaps that is what the American Dream really is, or could or should be. And so, in these trying days, perhaps years to come, including Christmases with or without gifts, let’s hope for the gift of strength, the gift of caring about each other and this Union. Santa will be okay. Hopefully, he has Social Security and Medicare, FDR’s and LBJ’s great gifts to the American people.

Let’s take a minute, too, to remember that this Saturday, November 22, is the 45th Anniversary of John F Kennedy’s Assassination, and what was taken from us truly by a cadre of criminals, a number of whom are still among us. Little has changed in some ways since 1963 and its shattered days of Camelot. Yet we have found the resiliency to go on another 45 years. And we will go on exponentially, doing the right thing.

The war between the fascists and us that we thought we had won in 1945 still continues with the greedy Titans of the Corporate State. Yet think of what life would have been without the gifts of FDR, JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm, and millions of the unsung George Baileys. Perhaps you are one. I hope so. I’m honored to write for you. Lastly, please, Happy if scaled down Holidays. Remember, we all have each other.