JOHN TIERNEY
ESSAY


Now that hard times have arrived, what are we supposed to do for the holidays- The logical answer is to cut out the useless and the lavish, but I have it on the highest authority that it’s not that simple.

The authority is Bill Cranmer, whom I consulted for holiday tips because he is a hereditary chief and elected leader of the Kwakwaka’wakw Indians, the world’s most experienced gift-givers. They’ve learned that exchanging presents is too important to be discontinued in any kind of economy.

These Indians on the Pacific coast of British Columbia are famous for their potlatches, which are feasts and gift-giving ceremonies that serve a variety of functions: creating alliances, promoting altruism, redistributing wealth, and, not least, showing off. The events became a staple of anthropology textbooks and helped inspire Thorstein Veblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption.

When Chief Cranmer’s ancestors hosted a potlatch, they displayed stacks of blankets and mountains of flour to be handed out to the masses, and singled out important guests for silver bracelets and boats. A chief sometimes flaunted his affluence by tossing his own canoes into the fire.

Missionaries denounced the potlatch as“wasteful’’and“heathen.’’But nothing, not even the Great Depression, could stop the potlatchers.

Although the Indians’ traditional fishing industry has been devastated in recent decades, they’re still holding potlatches that typically cost the host chief and his extended family at least $30,000.

What can the Kwakwaka’wakw teach us in our hard times- Here, courtesy of some of their elders and the anthropologists who have studied the potlatch, are some lessons for dealing with the holiday crunch:

Simplify and economize. For his next potlatch, Chief Cranmer will be shopping for 1,000 guests, but he makes it sound easy. He buys in bulk (“They look at you funny at the department store when you order 500 blankets”) and goes for a lot of basic items like glassware, dishes and towels. And he’s not afraid to recycle.

“In my basement I have a room pretty near full of stuff that I’ve gotten at potlatches,”he says.“We’ll give some of it away again.”He plans to give cash and special gifts to some fellow chiefs, but he doesn’t plan to go into debt.

Don’t forget your enemies.“A lot of attention has been paid to the competitive side of the old potlatches, but they also helped people avoid conflicts,”says Aldona Jonaitis, an anthropologist at the University of Alaska.“Besides strengthening the bonds within a family, potlatching enabled people to establish bonds and obligations with potential enemies outside the family.”Today, with families becoming smaller and more dispersed, giving gifts to outsiders - even ones you don’t like - is a better self-preservation strategy than ever.

Share the wealth. In return for recognizing the greatness of the host chief, the low-status guests were given food and gifts without any expectation of repayment. It might be seen as an example of“trickle-down economics,”says Aaron Glass, a potlatch scholar at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

“The potlatch functioned to make sure everyone had enough fish and that the excess trading wealth was redistributed to the entire community,”Dr.Glass said. In hard times that function is especially important.

Ignore the Scrooges. For more than a century, the potlatchers in Chief Cranmer’s family have been rebuffing their critics with a simple explanation.“Outsiders may think we’re dumb for giving away our money when everyone else is trying to save, but we do it because we feel good,”Chief Cranmer says.“After you give away everything and are pretty broke, you’re supposed to be happy.”