Consider the turkey.

As presently constituted, a ridiculous beast. It has tiny legs supporting a fat body, with breasts like a porn star's and a face like a 90-year-old fisherman's. This makes it the perfect symbol for the holidays, which have become bloated with commercialism, laden with manufactured sentiment, and disconnected from any sense of intimacy or meaning.

It's time for a change. Here's a knife. Let's cut these turkeylike traditions down to size and eviscerate them of their trauma, wastefulness, and energy-sapping power. What's left will be less stress and more time to enjoy what matters: family, friendship, and the feast. It's time to carve the beast.

Get Out from Behind the Camera
You're a family member, not a historian, and this is Christmas, not C-SPAN. Put the video camera down and live the day instead of reliving it on TV later. Joe Berlinger, codirector of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, recommends focusing on key events that tell the story—the arrival, the toast, the presents. Record five 6-minute chunks throughout the day. You're wrapped in 30.

When shooting family portraits, don't force kids to be cute. They'll go diva on you. Catch them 30 minutes after they wake up—they're liveliest then. To elicit a fun reaction, extend a tape measure and then snap it back. Small kids love it, says Bambi Cantrell, author of The Art of Wedding Photography and a photographer in Pleasant Hill, California. With babies, brush their faces with a (clean!) feather duster for instant laughs.

Take the group shot an hour after dinner, when everyone is relaxed. Tell them all to stand at 45 degrees, 1 foot apart, front hip pushed away from the camera—the Great Slimming Technique. Have the back row hug the front row for an intimate and happy-looking family, even if it's a huge lie. Shoot from the waist up—feet are irrelevant, unless you're a family of podiatrists.

Knock Out the Greed
Commercialism fuels terrific self-righteous anger in some people, but Santa isn't a bad myth, and presents aren't inherently evil. Maybe what turns "giving" into a great soulless gift orgy is the meaninglessness of it, especially when your kid will never ask for what he wants along with all the presents: time with you.

So give the toys and then play with him, says psychiatrist Alvin Rosenfeld, M.D., author of The Over-Scheduled Child. Also give practical stuff—socks, mittens, Born to Run—to show there's a utility to gifts. Then, when it's his turn to give, he may take into account what someone else needs, says Melvin Oatis, M.D., an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at New York University's Child Study Center.

Simplify Your Shopping
Whether you venture out on Black Friday or Christmas Eve, holiday shopping sucks, period. You can't get away with undergifting your immediate brood, but cut your shopping time by deferring smaller gifts, like the present for that nephew you forgot you had.

Give him a shopping spree, says Robyn Freedman Spizman, author of Giftionary. All you need is a card and a simple sentiment. Cap the spending and promise to take him whenever he wants (after January 1). You'll see what he really likes, and you'll be spending time together.

Find a Gift that Earns You Sex
You can park this curveball without going anywhere near a mall. She keeps saying she wants to sing, paint, or speak Italian; prepay for some lessons and give her the space she needs to do them right. You're showing her you're interested in her soul. "The more you acknowledge who she is, the more you get back," says Lou Paget, a certified sex educator and the author of 365 Days of Sensational Sex.

Of course, all this may take a little more prep time than you've allotted to this holiday season. Fortunately, the vintners of California, Brazil, and France have been working overtime on your behalf. Stop at a wine store and have the clerk help you put together a mixed 12-pack of good hooch. Pick robust reds for the winter months, lighter whites for the spring and summer. You'll be out in half an hour, gift bags included.

Add some intimacy by attaching a handwritten list of the dates you want to have with her in the next year. The thought that, in December, you're already planning a little dejeuner sur l'herbe (French for "picnic with a naked lady") in July will make her melt with anticipation.

As a subtext to the presentation of your wine calendar, talk about the stuff you did when you started going out that you want to do again. This will not go unrewarded, especially if you leave out the part about having sex 15 times a week.

Write a Brag-Free Family Letter
There's room and purpose for a holiday letter, but it's so easy for it to become an epic dumping ground for minutiae. ("Junior got an A-minus and still has that 3.8358 GPA!") This thing should not resemble Warren Buffett's annual letter to shareholders.

It should be a quick, amusing update for friends and family, especially the ones you never get to see. Three rules: Keep it short, no more than a page; keep it positive, even if you lost a leg back in June; and don't spend more than an hour writing it. It'll still be great, and greatly appreciated.

Stay Sane Traveling by Plane
You already know to book your flight to depart on Turkey or Christmas Day. Those are always less hectic times to fly. But if you're traveling with the rest of the preholiday horde, at least minimize the pain by getting a ride to the airport—finding a parking space will be harder than getting curbside check-in at Baghdad International.

And use a secondary airport whenever you can. "Major airports are just goat rodeos," says Sara Kanov, an Atlanta travel agent. And start planning for next year. Tickets go on sale 331 days prior, so if you know where you'll be, buy now. It may not be the cheapest ticket, but you'll have the choice of humane times and seats. The ideal one? The second exit row—it has the legroom and seats that recline.

Survive Annoying Relatives
You're particularly worried that your older brother will act like your older brother. E-mail him before the get-together. Keep it in the first person. Accept any responsibility there is to accept (so he doesn't get defensive), and just say that you're looking forward to seeing him, you want it to be fun, and you'd like to find some time to talk. You've just managed to slash the tension, says Alan Manevitz, M.D., a psychiatrist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

As for when your brother/father/mother/uncle says something about you that you don't appreciate, and you can't take any more, and ripping into that person would be really, really bad . . . go to the bathroom. You'll get 5 minutes of privacy in the tile-and-porcelain oasis to remind yourself that you don't live in this house anymore and these people are a temporary condition.

 Undoing Perpetual Stress and a psychologist in New York City and Canaan, Connecticut. Then flush and return to the fray a better man.

Sidestep the Holiday Blues
The sense of isolation usually hits hardest right after New Year's, after all the socializing is over. Before the holidays, make plans for January, O'Connor says. You'll have something to look forward to as you're sitting in the bathroom sucking on peppermint, reminding yourself you don't live there anymore.

A trip might be the remedy, and it'll be cheap. Good airline and hotel deals can be found the first week in January, says Kanov, since no one is thinking of traveling then—and island resorts don't stay open on hope.

Don't Watch "It's a Wonderful Life"
Sure, it's tradition . . . but you want it to stop. Don't just groan and say it's stupid. That will only upset whoever loves the tradition, probably The Mom. Propose a new one—a Scrabble tournament, a snowball fight, anything with a little more interaction and a little less suicide.

Or you could just talk. If there's not much of a precedent for that, start with topics that can involve everyone. What was your first boss like? What was the first thing you wanted to be when you were a kid? What is your earliest memory? What was life like for the family back in the Old Country? How did Uncle Zach meet the Ziegfeld girl he married? You'll learn something about the older relatives' lives, and they'll fill in the gaps in yours, Dr. Manevitz says.

A few planning rules: Keep it light and fun. No directives. No orders. No chores. And don't supervise the proceedings or have preconceptions of what's supposed to happen. If the goal is to talk and everyone's talking, mazel tov.

Dodge the Holiday Weight Gain
First, a reality check. If you absolutely gorge yourself on the Thanksgiving and Christmas vittles, you're looking at a huge gain of . . . 2 pounds. So enjoy the pie and stuffing and pie and pie and stuffing pie. If you restrict it to just those two big meals, you have no worries.

But if self-discipline isn't your forte, the challenge becomes the waistland between the holidays, with all the parties and foods just sitting around the office, making it easy to scarf down 1,000 extra calories a day and gain 7 to 10 pounds before the new year, says Heidi Skolnik, team nutritionist for the New York Giants.

The solution? Eat a sensible snack—nuts, yogurt, or half a turkey sandwich with tomato—before you hit the parties so you won't feast like you've just been rescued from a plane wreck. Stand away from the food tables. And socialize hard: When you're talking, words are coming out of your mouth instead of a dozen more bacon-wrapped mini hot dogs going in.

Hit All the Parties (Politely)
Say you receive four invites, want to hit all four bashes, but obviously can't stay till the ball drops at all of them. (And maybe you and your lady just want to go home and ring in the new year with a bigger bang.) How do you make brief appearances without offending the hosts?

Follow the lead of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper—for politicians are the masters at leaving parties with an effortless smile: "As soon as you arrive, find the host and say, 'I didn't want to miss this, but I can only stay for 15 minutes.' They'll be more appreciative than if you stayed for 3 hours, ate all their food, drank all their alcohol, and left at 11:30."

And make sure you go light on the booze—you're traveling, after all. One last schmoozing tip: Ask questions and listen. "I feel that I've connected and learned something," says the mayor.

Catch the Bowl Games that Count
Watching a bowl game on New Year's Day is a terrific tradition—but six? If your favorite team plays, slap on a coat of face paint and roar. But if you just want some good ball, go with the SEC, a consistently intense conference, says Bill Curry, ESPN's college-football analyst.

If they're matched up against the Big Ten, even better. "The 'Old South' still has a bit of an inferiority complex, and the only way to whup on the Yankees is football," he says.

If time is limited, watch the opening kickoff and the first two possessions to see how sharp the teams are. Catch the first 10 minutes of the third quarter to see how the teams responded to halftime, and then, if drama brews, commit to the fourth.