She would find a tree that was at least eight feet tall, and she'd go back for fresh greenery for wreaths, centerpieces, and trimmings for her Advent candles. She didn't just decorate the living room. She decorated every room.

This year, Mortensen is scaling back.

Her daughters are grown and in their 30s (and all vegetarian, so forget the turkey feast), two live in San Francisco, and the holidays just aren't what they were when Mortensen's husband was alive and the girls were small.

As owner of Heidi's Catering, 70-year-old Mortensen makes a living making other people's holidays easier. Now she's trying to do the same for herself.

"We have some very, very strong Bavarian/German Christmas traditions," she said "This is the first year I decided to sway away from that and do something different."

She might not even put up a tree this year at her Diamond Head home.

Let go of the small stuff

Thanks to the commercialization of the season, Christmas decorations went up in the stores before Halloween. Now, as the clock ticks down to Thanksgiving, so does the ticker that points to pressures of time, money, imposed expectations and the kind of thoughts that fill people with a feeling of dread or inadequacy instead of joy.

Maybe your frenzy is brought out by your sister-in-law's inner Martha, or by visions of holidays past that you can't quite duplicate.

As a Honolulu military wife, Isabel Borras has had to let go of some traditions because she's separated from her extended family.

"Moving around, I think Thanksgiving is the worst," said Borras, who has a 2›-year-old daughter and a baby on the way, and whose husband was deployed most of last year. "At Christmas, we usually try to go home."

But last Thanksgiving was a departure from tradition.

"It was the first time away from home," Borras said. "We spent it here, and we spent time with friends and went to a military dinner."

Being willing to adapt to the circumstances and create new traditions keeps her from stressing out.

Daryl Valdez, 24, of Waipahu, tries to focus on the positive. He says he deals with the stress by making time for his family but leaving time to relax by himself.

"I'm grateful that I still have my grandparents around, and I try to spend as much time with them as I can," he said.

For others, family party time is an experience of knowing somebody at the family party is going to say something that gets on your nerves: "Why don't you have a boyfriend?" or "When are you going to have a baby?" or "Do you think you really need seconds?"

Mary Horn, a clinical psychologist in Kane'ohe, suggests you go to the party anticipating that sort of thing. "The more prepared we are for stressors, the better," she said.

So if you can make some mental notes about how you'll respond, you'll be able to let it go and move on. You can remind yourself of the positive parts of the holiday and hold on to what's important to you.

"It's definitely a stressful time of the year," she said, with problems ranging from weight gain to money issues or strained family situations. "When we can go in prepared for things, I don't think it's as bad as when we're blindsided."

Simplicity can be enough

If that Norman Rockwell portrait of bringing the turkey to the table with smiles all around hasn't happened in your life, you are not the only one. But it doesn't have to be perfect to be meaningful.

Writer-director Peter Hedges, the filmmaker behind this season's "Pieces of April," touches on the theme of trying to reconnect with family. The story is about a punkish twentysomething, April Burns (played by Katie Holmes), who attempts to make a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for her estranged family.

April is the black sheep of the family, her mother is dying of cancer, and just as she's about to prepare the turkey, she discovers her oven doesn't work. It's a dark comedy about a universal idea: the neuroses of pulling off the perfect Thanksgiving.

The film is funnier than the movie version of Hedges' "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," but it's similar in tone and doesn't make fun of the characters. Instead, it drives home the message that a healthy sense of humor is probably the best antidote to holiday stress.

For his part, Hedges will have a big family Thanksgiving gathering of 14 people in a farmhouse in Vermont. It will be the first time he's been to that kind of homecoming in 23 years.

While he doesn't face the same kind of stress as the April character in his film, he understands it.

"In terms of Thanksgiving, it's the day two things are required," he said. "We are to be grateful for all that we have, the blessings in our lives, and we are to love our families. Sometimes it's hard to be grateful, and sometimes it's hard to love the people that we should."

Mortensen remembers trying to talk the whole family into getting together for Christmas 1996. It was the last time the family was all together. Her husband died the following January. But she and her daughters are grateful for the memories.

Holidays have never felt the same since then, but Mortensen hopes simplifying things will put the emphasis back on just being together.

Life is fragile, just as "Pieces of April" points out. But families often have a way of finding their way back to each other, no matter how many traditions they change to get there.