Thank you note from children for a Christmas gift?!? AYFKM??? This is their time, it is a time for children to receive because of who they are, the thank you pays ahead, decades later, to their children. If the adult desires a thankyou note that is their issue that should not be spread to your children. If they can not give without strings attached then perhaps they should not give on Christmas because they are not actually giving.
This is a really good point right here. If your aunt is sending them gifts they don’t want or don’t care for, it’s really hard to make them send thank you notes when it feels like they are lying about liking their gifts. Is there a way for you to gently suggest that your aunt send them magazine subscriptions or gift cards to the bookstore or someplace? That way, at least if she’s going to send gifts, the kids will like them.
Well, there is another choice. Dont argue with the kids. Tell them they have a choice:
Either no more gift from Auntie,** or** Thank you cards.
I am perhaps the biggest Scrooge ever, but even I know that gift receiving is about the giver not myself. I say thanks, and if I do not like it I can donate to charity or exchange for something I do want. I send a quick text or email as a thank you. You feel free to raise your kids however you want but I choose to teach mine to at least call and say thank you.
As for giving gifts I also loathe it and have begun exclusively giving gift cards except to my husband. He bought the majority of presents for the kids this year so he deserved more than a gift card 
Thanking someone for a gift you didn’t want, to me, is more or less a textbook example of being phony. Aren’t we supposed to be cultivating honesty in relationships? Grandma, I don’t need any more quilts. Thanks for your honest effort to help, but I really have too many. Have you considered giving some quilts to the local charity?
Do you go by Scrooge or Grinch in another life? Get over yourself, your needs and wants are not the dominant force in the lives of other people.
One of the things that my mother kept on emphasizing was that our own feelings are our own responsibility. So if you keep sending gifts and continue to be upset over the fact that you aren’t receiving thank you notes, your upset-ness is your own fault. People don’t make you upset, you allow yourself to become upset because of your own ideas. So the problem is on Aunty - if she can’t rectify the situation, then essentially she is having emotional issues and Needs Help ™.
The point of sending thank-yous is the gratitude. Reinforcing that simultaneously with an onerous* obligation actually negatively reinforces the gratitude (IMO, of course). I think it’s better parenting to focus on conveying the message. The manner of conveyance is ir-fuckin-relevant. And there’s nothing wrong with picking up the phone and saying “Thanks for the awesome toy, Aunty Agnes, love you!” As children, my sister and I spent half of every Christmas morning on the phone with relatives to thank them for the awesome &crap they gave us that year. That’s all my mom asked of us, and it didn’t seem too much to give. And, aside from the random bouts of swearing, I’m still an incredibly gracious person.
*You might say it’s not that hard to send a letter. I don’t know about you, but I don’t keep spare envelopes and stamps in my home. If Aunty doesn’t do e-mail, then she can take my phone call or nothing at all. And I’m alright with that–you can be, too!
Family newsletter:
“Any gifts intended for the carlotta family please give in the form of a donation to X charity.”
Whether they actually give to said charity or not shouldn’t concern you. The end result is all that matters. And if anyone gives you shit about it, they’ll be the ones to look like monsters.
A thank-you note not only lets the person know you received their gift but that you appreciate their thinking of you. Children don’t just get things because of who they are?! Should they even have to say thank you in person?
No, just no.
“Thank you for the fill-in-the-blank. It was nice of you to think of me.” Then do what you want with the gift.
While I agree that dealing with unwanted gifts can be annoying, teaching your children that they should only write thank you letters for gifts they like misses the point. You’re supposed to be thanking the person for thinking of you and trying to please you, not rating their success and providing feedback.
Exactly
Poor old Aunty. All she wants to do is stay connected to her far-flung family, feel like she still matters in their lives, and let them know they are in her thoughts and heart. Going out to buy and ship a gift to the nieces and nephews she never gets to see makes her feel less isolated. A quick thank you note arriving in her mail lets her know the gift arrived and makes a welcome change from all the bills and ads in the mail.
Why do you hate giving or receiving gifts so much? And why are you so eager to get those gifts out of the house? Is this a clutter/control issue, like my friend who is a bare minimalist when it comes to possessions?
One good way to stop celebrating Christmas is to decide what part Christianity plays in your life. If you aren’t Christian, you have the perfect excuse for declaring that your family isn’t going to participate in the holiday. Yes, I know many people consider it a secular holiday, but at its core it isn’t, and the gift-giving is symbolic. So you have a built-in excuse to ignore the whole thing, or change your family tradition to include gifts of service and aid to those less fortunate. You are the parent, after all.
And now we know the perfect gift for Rachellelogram at the next gift exchange…notecards and stamps! LOL
The thing that gets to me is, how much can they really be thinking of you and trying to please you if the gift is the polar opposite of anything you’re interested in? How thoughtful can that even be? A gift like that proves to me how little of a connection I have to that person. If they talked to me at all they would know that gift was an awful choice. What, is this gift supposed to be a stand-in for having actual conversations or experiences where we get to know each other?
And lo and behold, the bad gifts I get are from people I don’t speak to more than once all year. Why did they bother? They obviously don’t care the other 363 days of the year. It isn’t a thoughtful gift. It was just to make themseleves feel better or at least not feel like they failed a social obligation.
So yeah, it feels like a charade to get a gift like that and pretend it was such a thoughtful, kind thing on their part that I enjoyed receiving when none of that is true.
People try and fail at things all the time. Don’t assume that someone who has not succeeded at pleasing you with a gift wasn’t trying, especially in the case of a relative who lives far away trying to choose gifts for children, whose tastes and preferences are extremely likely to change often, with no memo sent out. The gifts are clearly an attempt to maintain a connection and let them know they are thought of and cared about. It is obviously much less trouble to NOT choose a gift, NOT pay for a gift, and NOT send a gift, so why would you conclude they only care two days out of the year?
The proper thing to do is thank the giver for the gift and do with it as you wish. Why would anyone want to teach their children that they are entitled to receive particular gifts that please them and if a giver fails they should be shunned? The world likes gracious people, not entitled assholes, so which will be better for them in life?
This is a beautifully well-written post, Eonwe, and I want to thank you for sharing it. It should be told/emailed/Facebook posted/printed on a T-shirt for all to see starting around Dec. 1 each year.
Or … I guess I could cross-stitch it, and give it as a gift. 
IMHO the child should not be restricted from doing so. However the thank you should be from the parent. For a child, if in person, a response ‘wow this is great’, and smiles and laughter should be all the thanks a person needs from them - EVER, and a overwhelming ty from the parents for bringing joy to their child.
What if the child is not joyful to receive the gift and instead shrugs and says he doesn’t like it/already has it/thinks you could have done better?
Dictate the following to your kids;
Dear Aunt xxx; Thank you for the thoughtful gift of yyy.
This is the last time we can accept such gifts as we are converting to wicca and will then only accept gifts that are pleasing to the Triple Goddess or the Horned God.
Any other gifts will have to be burned in nude rituals that implore the gods to posses us.
Sincerely; Zzzz (my current, Abrahamic name)
Seriously;
All I’m hearing is extremely poor and/or utterly inefficient communication.
Aunt doesn’t know what kids want. You nor kids talk to her enough to tell her.
Then it would be a lie for them to send a thank you card, and forcing the kid to do it would just be forcing them to lie, and morally wrong.
The point of teaching kids to say “please” and “thank you” and all that sort of stuff is to teach them to actually be thankful. This is why I think the focus on thank you cards is ill placed. If that’s not the way you normally interact with people, you wind up teaching a social obligation rather than true thankfulness.
And it can also lead to someone giving bad gifts because they don’t know you really aren’t thankful. It creates a problem that could be dealt with if both sides would just communicate truthfully to one another.
My advice to the OP is to open up communication with the aunt. Let her know about the kids and the type of stuff they are into. If she truly cares, she will want to try to give gifts that are better appreciated.
At 14 and especially 16, I think the kids are too old to be forced into sending thank you notes, anyways.