Credit crunch Christmas

Newsnight's Culture Correspondent has been in search of examples of festive excesses being curbed in these tough economic times.

By Stephen Smith
Culture Correspondent, Newsnight

Christmas is coming and the goose is getting - well, not quite so fat this year, one suspects.

It reminds me of the gag about the family who were so hard up, they couldn't afford a turkey at Christmas - so they bought the budgie some chest expanders instead.

Many of us are feeling the pinch this year. So we decided that the latest episode in our award-skirting 'Going Cheap' series (more below) should be all about the festive season.

Knit your own XBox

Ros Shiel was made redundant from her job as a PR in the drinks industry in October, and now pens a weekly column, 'Glass Half Full', a suitably spirited account of coming to terms with the crunch.

Ros and her husband are a professional couple from Horsham, West Sussex, with two teenage boys. We asked Ros how she will be celebrating this year.

"My 'credit crunch Christmas' will include some or all of the following: knitting my own XBox games; buying a slightly less feathered, less bronzed turkey; putting the Christmas stockings through a high, wool-shrinking wash and, my personal favourite, saving petrol by not driving to the in-laws on Boxing Day…

"And we're already sharing one Advent calendar between the four of us, so I don't get my first breakfast chocolate 'til Thursday."

In Lincolnshire, everything on Ann Clark's festive groaning board will come from her own back yard this year - yes, even the turkey. She's taken up breeding them.

NEWSNIGHT GOING CHEAP

Ann and her partner Brian downsized ahead of the credit crunch when they moved from Essex some time back and their animal husbandry will do more that just putting something on their table - it's putting a little something in their pocket too by providing Christmas dinner for many.

But as more people look to emulate her exercise in downsizing she finds herself giving advice more and more often on message boards to wannabe smallholders and farmers.

Redundant fairy

At the Arts Theatre, Nottingham, they're trying to take everyone's minds off the downturn with an upbeat, highly musical production of 'Jack and the Beanstalk'.

Yes, in the East Midlands, they're promising to take the credit crunch out of Christmas and replace it with 'jingle bell rock'.

As you'd expect, there are one or two topical gags at the expense of bean-counters. But not even the spirited mumming of Nottingham's amateur players can drag the show out of the shadow of the crunch entirely.

The Fairy Godmother took voluntary redundancy a few weeks ago, we learnt, and the Dame, Jack's mother, is a former bank manager who told me in his dressing room that he has sympathy with people who blame the banks.

That was moments before a boot came crashing through the ceiling. No, not the Giant's terrible hobnail - how the company might wish it could run to special effects like that (they even have to mime the beanstalk) - this was a technician who had put his foot through the stage directly overhead.

An all too poignant scene from this yuletide of threadbare boards.

RELATED INTERNET LINKS
Ros Shiel's 'Glass Half Full' column
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