Quiet Christmas Planned at White House : Holidays: A family observance is scheduled. Clintons will later go to Arkansas, South Carolina.

A quiet family Christmas at the White House was to mark the end of what has been one of the rockiest weeks of Bill Clinton’s presidency.

With official and unofficial Washington closed down for Christmas Eve, Clinton had a chance to set aside the controversies that have dogged him in the past few days, including intimations of financial wrongdoing in his personal investments, reports concerning alleged past sexual liaisons and a controversy over the failure of his defense secretary-designate to pay Social Security taxes on domestic help.

On Friday, Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton videotaped their holiday greeting to the nation, which will be broadcast today. “Our greatest gift is the one within--the emergence and the sharing of our better selves,” the President said.

The White House also released Clinton’s official Christmas message, an appeal to “reach out to the people around us and work for a world at peace.”

The President later took his wife and daughter Chelsea shopping for last-minute gifts at a crowded mall, then made telephone calls from the Oval Office to members of the armed forces around the world.

“I called to thank you for your service and to tell you how much I appreciate it,” Clinton said to each of the seven men and three women he telephoned in South Korea, Somalia, Japan, Moscow, Croatia, Turkey, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and on ships off the coasts of Somalia and the former Yugoslav federation.

He asked each to tell fellow servicemen and women that the President conveyed Christmas wishes and the nation’s gratitude for their service.

The Clintons spent nearly half an hour inside a store in the Georgetown area that specializes in glass, silver plates and jewelry, while shoppers on four levels jammed balconies to watch them. The White House did not say what the Clintons bought, but the President emerged carrying two shopping bags.

Although presidents in recent years have generally spent the holiday at Camp David, Md., the Clintons chose to celebrate it in the White House with only their closest family. Among the guests were Clinton’s mother and stepfather, Virginia and Dick Kelley; Clinton’s brother, Roger, and Hillary Clinton’s recently widowed mother, Dorothy Rodham.

White House chefs were said to be preparing a traditional Christmas meal of turkey and trimmings, to be followed by pumpkin and pecan pies.

The intimate gathering will be a sharp contrast from the dizzying round of more than a dozen White House parties that have led up to the holiday, during which the President and First Lady were estimated to have shaken hands and posed for pictures with 100,000 visitors.

On Thursday, Clinton also added his tenor to a sing-along “Messiah” at the Kennedy Center; it also has been reported that the President and his wife have tickets to see the “Will Rogers Follies” there Sunday night.

Next week, the Clintons are scheduled to head home to Arkansas, where the President plans to take in a University of Arkansas basketball game in Fayetteville on Tuesday. Then the family will travel to Hilton Head, S.C., for an annual gathering known as the Renaissance Weekend.

The Clintons are scheduled to return to the White House on Jan. 2.