My family adopted the "no gifts" Christmas rule several years ago. Apparently, my siblings were stressing out financially each year buying gifts, but I found it did wonders for reducing my own holiday stress. Now we just get together, eat, talk, play games, and play with the kids. It's amazing in retrospect to see how small a part of the family get-together was gift-giving. We would exchange gifts, stack our new toys into piles, and forget about them until it was time to load up the cars to go home.

Gift-giving can become such a social minefield too. We had a birthday party for my oldest son and specifically requested no gifts (he has enough toys). One attendant missed it or ignored it and brought one anyway. We politely thanked them for the gift, and were immediately confronted by several other parents who became quite defensive and a little angry with us (seemingly embarrassed that they had not brought gifts). Some of them even came back after the party with gifts to somehow make amends in their minds. There's a lot of social stuff I don't understand surrounding gift-giving.