I exempt myself from giving and receiving gifts. I refuse gifts and tell my friends not to expect any from me, either. I wish people would offer to buy me basic stuff like gasoline, ramen, wash cycles at the laundromat, etc., instead of trying to force useless expensive shit down my throat.
One side of my family draws names and we get gifts for that person. They stopped putting a price limit on it because some people (I am looking at you grandma) would ignore it and then people would feel bad because they looked cheap in comparison. This year I pulled my 2 year old cousin, which is nice since I am 24 and though I am not broke I certianly don’t have the income of the rest of the family members. He is so young he just wants lots of stuff to unwrap, so I got him lots of small, cheap things and he will think he hit the jackpot. Adults are harder to buy gifts for and it isn’t nearly as much fun as shopping for toys.
Hate it. We draw names, and the limit is $25. So I only have to buy one gift for family, and spend only $25. But then everyone sends out lists, so you just buy something off the list. It’s so boring.
I was thisclose to getting them all to agree to a no-gift Christmas this year, but I got up from the table to go to the bathroom, and by the time I got back, dad had prevailed. (His winning argument? My brother and SIL, who live on the other side of the state, won’t be coming down for Christmas. We have to send them something so they’ll feel included in Christmas. But I already talked to them, and they don’t want to do gifts either!!.)
So, once again, I have to come up with some darn Christmas gift ideas. I don’t want gifts! I don’t want anything! But I also don’t want to spoil everyone else’s Christmas fun. So to sum up, me=grinchy.
I get a gift for everyone in my immediate family (brother, sister, brother-in-law, mom and dad,) and that’s pretty much it. My dad’s extended family is large (I have 18 cousins, and several of them are married and have kids). All of the “adults” (ie, everyone who’s not of the “third” generation (my dad and his siblings being one, my cousins and I being two, their kids being three)) does an ornament exchange. We all buy an ornament, wrap it, and then we draw numbers to see who gets to go first. Number 1 picks one out and opens it, then so forth down the line. The higher numbers can either get a new ornament, or steal someone else’s, in which case they have to get a new one. At the end, whoever drew #1 gets to steal someone else’s if they want, since they didn’t have a choice earlier.
It’s actually kind of fun, because there is always a gag ornament or two that are atrocious, and a couple that get passed around cause everyone wants them, but no one takes it seriously, so there’s no screaming or fighting because you stole the “good” ornament from someone.
Hate it or love it depending on who is involved.
Lilbro used to be a pain for gifts because, even if you gave him exactly what he’d asked for, he’d just look at it, go “uh” and hop over to see what Middlebro had gotten. He outgrew that sometime in his teens, phew.
But now I have a SiL who’s got the imagination of a broken chair; she doesn’t appreciate “un-ordered” gifts at all, wants what she wants when she wants it, and if she asked for, say, a black rabbit stole and you get her a black chinchilla stole she’ll bitch for months about not having gotten exactly what she asked for. OTOH, she’ll be perfectly happy to try and take control of other people’s birthday parties and gift lists, so… let’s say she’s got a few control issues and leave it at that, hm? But those control issues come up exactly at the times when the last thing I want to have to do is twist myself into somebody else’s rules.
Since the Bros, Nephew and Mom are perfectly happy to get whatever made me think of them whenever I happen to see them, I’m perfectly happy to spend Christmas away from “home”!
Since “my” family is just fine with exchanging presents
My husband has 5 sisters, and they have a draw-names gift exchange. You’d think that’d take care of it except for their parents and the now-teenage-to-20s nieces and nephew, but no. No, we have to get gifts for all the other sisters and (where applicable) their husbands as well; the gift exchange is a bigger present above and beyond. One reason it sucks is that the siblings have widely varying financial situations; I know now that last year when one of my SILs bought a ton of presents (moreso than I would have expected considering what I did know of her finances), she was also far behind on her bills and at least a month or two behind on rent.