It used to be that opening brand name boxes — Tiffany's, Abercrombie & Finch, Ralph Lauren — would elicit oohs and ahs over the holidays. Okay, maybe they still do, but the diving economy has caused a shift in thinking, and now — hip hip hoorah — meaningful and personalized presents are the new status gifts this holiday season.

With that in mind, we have assembled a gift list that will touch the heart for $50 or less. In fact, these gifts could be considered priceless in that they hearken back to the original intention of the holidays.

1. Create a personalized photo book or calendar. Cull through all your old photo albums, slides, and memory cards and gather up some of your favorite pictures. Whether you choose one major event (wedding, birthday, trip), a shared history, or just treasured moments together, this is a wonderful present that can be appreciated for years to come.

Local retailers like Kinkos (calendar $19.99) and Ritz Camera both offer various options for creating unique pictorial presents from either digital or photo images. There are also online services like Snapfish ($18.99 for a 2009 photo calendar) that don’t even require you to leave your home, as long as you have digital images on hand. Our favorite is Apple’s iPhoto, which allows you to design glossy hard- or soft-cover photo albums with personalized captions.

Americans may penny-pinch in other areas this season, but Christmas means seeing the light — and for some, the more the merrier. Come December, many families take their competitive spirit to new heights, because if there were an Olympics for holiday lights, we’d take the gold.

For example, in Anchorage, Alaska, the Lorangers shine 20,000 bulbs on a homemade Santa fishing from a pool of lights. At the Wills’ home in Mendota Falls, Minnesota, some 150 candy canes light up the exterior. A thousand miles west in Tuscon, Arizona, cacti sparkle. Down in Marble Falls, Texas, an electrified twirling lariat spells out Merry Christmas Y’All.

According to David Seidman, author of Holiday Lights!, Christmas lights began as a winter solstice ritual. When the nights grew long and bitter cold, people would bring in evergreens and burn slabs of wood. Eventually, this became the Yule log, and candle-lit trees soon followed.

In 1879, when Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, his assistant Edward Johnson took some home and lit up his own Christmas tree. The fashion became tradition when President Grover Cleveland put electric lights on the White House tree. Then in the late 1940’s and 50’s, when electricity became affordable, it became all the rage to decorate home exteriors.

This tradition still continues. And while some may not string 600,000 lights on their house this season, it doesn’t take much to dazzle and delight both kids and adults.

Here are David Seidman’s 10 wildest neighborhoods that parlay tradition into high-wattage celebration:

Baltimore, Maryland

The politics of gift-giving — especially in blended families — can be fraught with peril. With kids being human calculators, knowing the value of absolutely everything, each one will measure exactly where s/he stands in the pecking order. Yes, families need to have the wisdom of Solomon to navigate these minefields but there are ways to diffuse potential bombs instead of igniting them.

Here's what I've learned over the years to create holiday memories.

Christmas Gifts

Sometimes, because of finances, you simply can't buy the kinds of presents that you could before. But parents have to be adults and not point fingers. Instead of saying, "Johnny, you can't get an X-Box and a bike because your Dad left with that woman and we can't afford it," you can say, "Johnny, there is a difference between luxuries and necessities. Right now, we can't afford to buy everything I would want, but you can have a choice between an X-Box and a bike. And at another time, I hope to buy you the other one."

That makes the choices value-based versus divorce-based.

Do not spoil your child to get back at your husband. This always backfires. Have faith that simple pleasures are still what kids remember, not the particular toy. Your attitude in dealing with changes will be the roadmap in how they deal with bumps along the way, so be as positive as possible.

Gifts for Stepkids

Unlike my childhood, where a gift might be signed "From Mom and Dad," and I didn’t get mad if Mom really bought the gifts, in a divorced household, a signature of "Jill and Dad" feels inferior and empty. It’s another example of a child being force-fed this new family.

Many stepchildren feel they are sharing their father with another family and already have only rationed time with him. When Dad picks out the gift, it feels more special — and I think they're right.

• The Good: How to Put the "Give" into Thanksgiving
•The Bad: Divorce Yourself from the Thanksgiving Blues
• The Ugly: How to Navigate Nosy Divorce Questions on Thanksgiving

You know the saying that behind every great man is a woman. So it should not be surprising that there’s a woman behind Thanksgiving, too. The fact we even have it as a national holiday is due to the dogged efforts of Sarah Josepha Hale, the 19th century version of Oprah Winfrey. Hale was the editor of Godey's Lady’s Book. She was so enamored with the values of the pilgrims — steadfast, hardworking, religious, tenacious — she relentlessly used editorials year after year to promote the idea of Thanksgiving.

In addition to raising five children, advocating equal education for women, writing novels and poems, including “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” Hale lobbied President Lincoln with the determination of a Sherman tank. Finally, in the middle of the Civil War, President Lincoln declared Thursday, Nov. 23, 1863 a national holiday.

The idea of the holiday was not just gratitude but of giving to others.

And this year, more than any in recent memory, more people are in need of a helping hand. The loss of jobs has created a bigger need for food and a heaping spoonful of generosity.

All food banks are expecting an increase of people in need at their organizations. Whether serving food, packing grocery bags, or sorting canned items, you can spend a few hours of volunteering and make a difference.

Even after all these years, it surprises me how powerless one can feel as a stepparent and how important it is to manage expectations. This crystallizes often over the holidays when I ask my stepchildren to help me with the holiday card and have to negotiate their schedules as though I'm a United Nations diplomat.

Unlike my 10-year-old son, with whom I can say, "Please be at this place at this time" — and when he doesn't, I can yell, "Get your butt down here now" — every request to my step daughters must be managed carefully.

At the same time, if you ask step kids how they feel after their parents’ divorce, they will say they feel powerless, with no say in anything, that they have to juggle between two families while negotiating roles, rules, and status in both households.

Recently I emailed my stepdaughter telling her that step parenting is a lot like gardening a bed of roses. Instead of getting to dig deep and attach myself to the root stock, I am allowed only to skim the surface and never feel as though I've penetrated top soil. If I grab the flower the wrong way, it can be prickly. But it is still beautiful and worth nurturing.

She emailed me this response: "Just like the rose, stepchildren cannot help but have thorns, because it is in their nature to protect their roots."

I loved this exchange because it is honest — and helpful. The holidays are an emotionally charged time for any family — but even more so for stepfamilies. After years of experience, and as a certified stepfamily coach, I have learned that the secret to having a good time during the holidays is recognizing that each person should have a say in some part of the event, which makes it more a democracy than a dictatorship. The other part is following the adage that no act of love, however small, is wasted.

This Thanksgiving, how about we Americans show gratitude for the Native Americans who originally presided over our country. November is National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month, so this may be the time to make a pilgrimage to art museums showcasing Indian work.

John Grimes, former director of the Institute of American Indian Arts, one of the finest institutions in the US, sought to infuse the art world with a new vocabulary “based on global experience rather than Western ideals and history.”

The Smithsonian opened a new building on the Mall in Washington in 2004 to house the National Museum of the American Indian. In its first year in that location, the museum, which has branches in Manhattan and Maryland, was visited by more than three million people. Its collection of 800,000 artworks and artifacts from the Americas is an astonishing presentation of Native cultures.

As W. Richard West Jr., director of the museum and a man of Cheyenne and Arapaho lineage, said, “We are an institution of living cultures, not a museum of dying cultures.”

Here are his choices for the five museums with the best Native collections in the U.S.

The Heard Museum
Phoenix, Arizona

This center for contemporary Native American fine art boasts more than 35,000 pieces. Exhibits at the Heard have included the Celebration of Basket Weaving and Native Food Festivals, where top chefs demonstrate contemporary and traditional recipes. The online museum store offers Indian rugs, art, pottery, etc.

National Museum of the American Indian
Washington D.C.

‘Tis the time to think about entertaining. As a divorced woman, inviting people over to your house expands your social circle — but not necessarily your waistline — and has the added bonus of being cheaper than going out. If friends invite you out to dinner, you have to reciprocate, and entertaining from your home is often 1/5 the cost of a restaurant.

Plus, you want to create happy memories in your home for your children, and just because the Ex isn’t there doesn’t mean you can’t create — and maintain — cherished traditions.

Having been an editor in chief of several magazines, I have learned quite a few tricks for entertaining on a budget. Here are some that may appeal to you.

1. Lights in winter. People may remember the ambiance more than the food. You can make Santa Fe candles (and the kids can help) to line the sidewalk: a small brown paper bag, some sand for the bottom, and a candle set inside. Roll down the top of the bag, light the candles and there you have an inexpensive and charming way of decorating outdoors. As for inside, try paper globes hung from an archway, lighted with fairy lights, or invest in some nice fat candles. Buy them in bulk online (a four-inch-tall pillar is as little as $2.99 at www.candles.com) or try Pier One or Ikea. Use the candles all over the house. Et voila! It’s romantic, cheery, and will make the house beautiful. But avoid scented candles, which could be suffocating.

2. Decorate with fruit. Fill a bowl with polished apples. I have also used one large red bowl and two smaller ones filled with green apples as a holiday centerpiece. Apples can hold place cards for a sit down dinner. And then, after the party, the apples can become apple crisps or apple pies. Oranges studded with cloves are another holiday classic.

We’re all about pilgrimages – going to places that are fun and informative. Well, for this week’s destinations, we’re taking that term literally by sharing places that have people dressed up as Pilgrims and Early Americans to explain the meaning of Thanksgiving. We also are acknowledging that American Indians may not be as thankful for this holiday and should be honored for their contributions. In compiling this list, we are most thankful to suggestions from Chris Epting, one of the nation’s most inventive pop-culture archivists and explorers.

But before we share these adventures, just a little background on Thanksgiving that could be used for the car ride. And also to explain some places on this list that don’t automatically come to mind for Thanksgiving.

Sure, we celebrate the courage and perseverance of the Pilgrims, who had their first Thanksgiving in the fall of 1621, after half of the settlers died of starvation, and their second in July of 1623, after a rain saved their crops. But other places, like Jamestown and the Berkley Plantation, in Virginia, and St. Augustine, Florida, also claim early Thanksgiving customs.

Explorers definitely gave thanks when they hit the New World after enduring weeks on leaky boats eating hard biscuits and suffering through Atlantic storms. Columbus and his men gave thanks when they landed. Pedro Menendez de Aviles had a priest give an entire mass of Thanksgiving on September 8, 1565, when he claimed St. Augustine, Florida, for Spain.

However, the reason Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock get so much credit is that it was one of the rare colonies that included women right from the first. And leave it to women to make sure things happen.

There's no sugarcoating that these economic times are tough and are creating the need to be resourceful with the money we have. That’s why we want to be your source for reSOURCEful spending.

Our FWW financial experts know how to stretch a dollar like salt water taffy and how to devise money-saving tips that won't leave a saccharine aftertaste in your wallet. The sweet life can still exist, as long as you’re smart and nimble with insurance, stocks, cars, your work, your home and your life.

Below we have gathered the best "nougats" from our experts. They provide nudges, hints, and suggestions for actions you can take to put the power back into your hands — where it belongs. And it's written in ways that anyone can understand. While it’s not a cure-all, it may be the needed spoonful of sugar in the castor oil of recession.

1. Save Money Wisely. Yes, we know it’s easier said than done. But with a little creativity, you can trim your budget with a scalpel, not a hatchet. First, try out 10 Painless Financial Slimmers to cut out your financial fat with very little pain and lots of gain. Next, spend a weekend Winterizing Your Home — we promise it works, whether you’re in Walla Walla or Williamsburg. Last but not least, Turn Off Your Financial Leaks — you know, the little things like ATM fees, insurance deductibles, and hidden airline costs. If you know the right tips, you can make like Moses and stop the flow before your pocketbook is drained.

Is hubby suddenly logging on to classmates.com and talking about the good old days when he was a high school basketball star? Perhaps he’s taking up running, or he’s running to the gym to work on his abs and pecs?

Is he donning black leather jackets instead of Brooks Brothers? Is he spending more time in the bathroom than you do, and using more products?

Hmmm. He may be going through a mid-life crisis, but more likely he's doing the hanky panky with someone else.

The American psychic Edward Cayce said that intuition is knowledge from an unknown source that is usually true. As we all know, a woman's intuition is usually spot-on — especially when it comes to whether her guy is straying. However, the desire to avoid divorce puts us in a state of denial.

But, girlfriends, better to know the truth. That way you can come from a position of power in confronting the problem and solving it. With your interests in mind, we asked Danine Manette, the author of Ultimate Betrayal: Recognizing, Uncovering and Dealing with Infidelity, what 15 signs to look for if you suspect your mate is making out with someone else.

1. Do his friends' wives give you a pitiful, sympathetic look without saying anything?

2. Does he work more overtime, but still never have any money?

3. Does your mate have some new activity that occurs on the same night every week, and to which you are not invited?

4. Does he answer you promptly when you ask where he's been or does he hesitate before replying?

5. Has he suddenly begun carrying gum or breath mints?

6. Is he experiencing a sudden unexplained interest in changing his hairstyle and general appearance?

7. Has he started leaving his cell phone in his car at night, “to charge”?