My husband and I exchange gifts. We used to exchange gifts with his parents, until a couple of years ago his mother decreed that we weren’t going to any more. There was no discussion. There is a big Christmas Eve dinner hosted either by his mother, her sister-in-law, or my sister-in-law’s mother – they decide who’s going to do it – and usually about 30 people attend.
The rules change every year. One year “no gifts” were announced and my husband’s aunt bought expensive gifts for everyone, making us all feel foolish (expensive as in about $200 for every person present). The next year we were all given names and a price limit and told to buy a gift for a designated person. This year’s rules have not yet been announced, but they probably will be violated anyway.
I have no relatives, so my options are to go along with it or stay home and look as if I’m sulking, which is pretty much what I’d be doing. Nod and smile, honey. Nod and smile.
With our friends, we do a White Elephant Chinese Auction. I can’t explain it properly, but it involved White Elephant presents and swapping presents to the point of full contact hits. And alcohol.
Our family has stopped with all exchanges period. I am the youngest of my family at 35, and none of my siblings or I have children. My brother is dating someone that has 3 kids, and they are welcomed at our christmas get-together, but per the request of brother and his girlfriend, we do not get gifts for the kids.
I exchange gifts with my husband but that’s it.
Right now, we basically have only adults, so here’s how we do it:
Immediate family members (parents & siblings) all exhange with each other. For the extended family, the women do a Yankee swap*. It’s fun because it’s a fairly small group, and we have similar tastes so you’re guaranteed to come away with something you like. Also, it’s a bit of a competition to buy the best present, the one that gets “stolen” most often.
*The men used to, but it became “pass around the Best Buy gift cards”, so they stopped.
We also exchange presents between a select few members of the extended family.
We don’t have a big family so it doesn’t end up being a ton of presents.
ETA: Also, I love shopping for presents for people and finding the perfect gift for that person, so gift shopping for me isn’t usually a headache, but something fun.
A few years ago I decided that it was pretty tacky that people were buying me presents. I earn plenty of money and don’t need or want the crap they buy me. I told everyone to contribute to charity for my gift. Surprisingly nearly everyone I know went along with it and said do the same for me. So we just give gifts to charity Christmas trees.
People at work got the shits but now we give half our Christmas fund to charity (Salvos this year) so I don’t give a fuck. I think they only do it so that they don’t have to listen to me haranguing them about what selfish assholes they are.
A couple of years ago we instituted a great policy of one gift per household which works wonderfully. The kids all get individual gifts, of course.
At our family gettogether we all buy for the young kids. The adults aren’t supposed to buy for each other any more, except for close relatives like adult children buying for their parents. But some adults still buy for everyone, or do stuff like gift baskets with cookies and such.