CARACAS, Venezuela — Tradition dictates that Venezuelans, children and adults alike, wear brand new clothes on Christmas and New Year’s. Shirts, pants, dresses, stilettos and sneakers — all with that new smell and perfect, first-time fit. No wrinkles, stains or scratches allowed.

But the dollar bills circulating all across the country might as well show the Grinch instead of Washington this year. The government’s loosening of controls on dollars may have made them easier to get, but it has also made them less valuable in Venezuelan shops, with dollar prices overall about 40% above those last year.

And that has threatened the tradition known as “estrenos,” or premieres — a practice already badly eroded by Venezuela’s sharp, yearslong economic decline.

Marelvy Mallarino lives in Maracaibo, once the heart of the country’s oil boom and now a victim of its bust. She had not stepped into a mall for years, but decided to visit one in Caracas, the capital, while visiting her sister.

“Will it be enough? Won’t it be enough? We are counting the coins,” Mallarino said while waiting in an enormous line outside a store offering discounts on women’s shirts, shoes and denim on Black Friday. Venezuelans call it that in English, too.

One store offered fast-fashion heels, boots, wedges and sneakers discounted to $20 instead of $60. Headbands and other accessories were on sale for $1. At another store, cropped jeans for women were priced at $30, down from $100.

Those may sound like bargains abroad, but the dollar prices were much higher than even a year ago, and largely out of reach for people like Mallarino, who lost her business when the country’s oil industry collapsed and now lives off of remittances sent by her children in Peru.

When Venezuelan companies and the public sector were thriving more than a decade ago, employees would get hefty Christmas bonuses — often three times their monthly salary, all at once.

That allowed families to buy new outfits for all, an imported Christmas tree and enough food for the traditional holiday spread.

But the economy has shrunk by 75% since 2014 and the minimum wage for public employees and retirement payments has fallen to the equivalent of $2 a month. Monthly salaries in the private sector average $75. That has pushed many to find side jobs, rely on remittances or leave the country.

In the past, for those who could get them, stable greenbacks were a safety net against the increasingly worthless bolivar as prices in the local currency rose by tens or hundreds of thousands of percentage points a year.

People would wait for a day when the bolivar had fallen especially fast — quicker than stores could raise their prices — and change dollars into bolivars on the black market, where the rate was far more favorable than the official one. They’d quickly spend those stacks of local currency.

That’s all changed.

The country’s socialist government has eased price controls, and two years ago, it abandoned its complicated efforts to restrict transactions in dollars. There’s now little difference between the official and black market exchange rates.

And with dollars no longer frowned upon, some merchants don’t even bother giving prices in rapidly deteriorating bolivars anymore.