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It is a year of lower expectations.

Every year, there is a chorus of folks urging us to lower our expectations for the holidays — buy less, consume less, worry less about having a picture-perfect holiday, and spend more time reflecting on what the holiday means to us. This year, it seems, we will finally get a chance to do that.

I was recently asked what my childhood memories of the holidays were, and I had a couple of vivid ones.

I saw myself sitting on the wooden stairway of the farmhouse where my mother grew up. There were far too many people to sit at a table, too many to get an...