A fine point, well put.
I never quite understood “holiday stress”, at least as far as gift giving is concerned. I give people gifts because I enjoy it. I don’t feel obligated to do it, and I’ve never once felt pressured to give someone a gift.
Maybe instead of “opting out”, you could try not taking it so seriously. Or, if you really do have people pressuring you to buy gifts or making you feel like scum for not buying them, you should probably find a different social circle. Because those guys sound like a bunch of douchebags.
This thread has opened my eyes. What do you mean; gifts for everyone in your family? Non-kids? That you can’t afford? I honestly thought that was just bad screenwriting.
And there should be no such thing as gifts just for giving (I call them GiftyGifts). Is it laziness or learned helplessness that leads to the creation of the piece o’crap aisle in every store?
This thread is sort of the opposite of bah humbug.
Agreed. If I feel like giving a present to an adult, I’ll give cash or a gift card and let them use it in the best way that benefits them.
I’ve done a couple of things both at home and at work that worked well:
Home: Well, we tried to go the “no gifts for adults” thing but that didn’t work. Too much guilt, and people bought gifts anyway. So we switched to “one gift per household”, except in the case of the kids. So each household gets some kind of food item, cookies, or biscuits, or chocolate. It cuts way down on the gifts, and you don’t have to try and pick out special things they love. If they don’t like to eat it, they can leave it out for guests or take it to work or what have you. And the kids still get their prezzies.
Work: We also tried the “no gifts” rule, but my boss a few years ago went out and bought us all gifts anyway. :rolleyes: We are a tiny office and it was awkward. So I came up with an ornament exchange: we all get ornaments for each other. It’s way cheaper, you can still customize it a bit by getting ornaments that match personality, and if the other person hates it they only need to see it a few weeks out of the year.
The Christmas commercials on tv are getting way out of hand. They’ve passed “ridiculous” about three years ago, and they’re heading straight into “absurd” now. The way they try to shoehorn every thing you can possibly buy into a gift-giving suggestion, the never-ending Christmas music (some variation of the top five songs, of course), the rampant consumerism - I watch tv on DVR or with the sound off for commercials, and enough is still getting through to make me want to put my foot through the tv. Seriously, this is my least favourite part of Christmas. Okay, well, it’s tied with endless Christmas music everywhere we go, too.
Ya, they are even promoting lottery tickets as a gift. “It could be the gift that is remembered forever”.
I have to say I love all of the holiday celebration – the music, the decorations, the food, the gatherings. But the gift-giving has gotten ugly. I really wish my family would just stop it already. The problem is that my mother loves to buy gifts for people. She puts so much time, effort, energy and money into it that you feel really bad if you don’t reciprocate. I’m thinking maybe this year the siblings can agree to stop the madness. At least that way we’d each just have to buy a gift for Mom (and probably Dad too – he wouldn’t care if he didn’t get anything, but Mom definitely would). She’s been known to buy presents for people, and slap other people’s names on them, just so A gives B a gift, even if neither A nor B really cares.
My inlaws managed to screw up the Secret Santa name exchange, I think. :smack: Between those who didn’t notice the drawing was going on (oops - at least I wasn’t the only one) and the decision to collect the dinner placecards and use them as the names to be drawn (I think some were missed, plus those who weren’t there at the time - like the host’s own kid - weren’t in the drawing). Now some people are WTFing on Facebook about not having heard anything from their Santa about needing gift hints and… yeah.
Man, I love my side of the family.
Along with that time Cousin Joey was hit by lightning, and that girl a year ahead of you in high school was eaten by a maco shark. Because, really, the odds are about the same.
Oy.
We buy Dad lottery tickets every year for Christmas. First of all, he just really likes scratching them, and second of all, no one really expects to win anything. It’s just his token gift that gives him half an hour of scratchy enjoyment. 
Absolutely right. Before I got married, I pretty much had the adults in my family not buy me anything and I didn’t buy them anything and all was well.
Sadly, after getting married I cannot convince my wife to adopt this. She insists on buying gifts for everyone even though we really can’t afford it at this time and I’d like to use the money for little things like fixing the foundation or having enough to replace a fucking water heater.
I so fucking hate the feeling that I have to buy people who are in much better financial shape gifts and I hate that I have to accept whatever stuff they give me. I’d so much prefer just to get together for a nice meal and watch the kids open there gifts.
If they would even do the secret Santa nonsense so we’d only be responsible for giving and getting one present, but unfortunately that would be too fucking reasonable!
I really hate this bull shit!
Get him lice this year; he’ll have days of scratching fun. 