Released: November 30, 2008

Holidays downsized: No job and fewer gifts

Source: Jan Hoffman, New York Times (Free Registration)

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.”

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