In my family, for Christmas, everyone fills out a short questionnaire (hobbies, goals, what are you learning, where are you going, favorite authors/genres) then we use the questionnaires to guide gift giving. This way, there's still room for creativity and thoughtfulness in gift giving, but it's guided by the responses. Plus, it's fun to read everyone's answers and you can give gifts that line up with multi-year trends after a while.
But we no longer feel like we have to buy something for the other on some arbitrary date looks like a birthday or holiday.
It's so freeing. Bonus: we have less stuff in our house.
Trying to implement this with my extended family. We still but gifts for the kids though, they enjoy it.
If we boiled everything down to sheer logic we wouldn't celebrate Christmas at all. The point isn't necessarily what makes the most "sense," it's about tradition and good feelings.
your system sounds nice too though, just a little more effort than I want to put in.
For the most part Christmas gifts are about balancing an equation by buying each other shit you don’t need and then hoping your spend cancels each other out. If it doesn’t, resentment and drama.
You can both spend/save the exact same money together by buying nothing. Club together on food, drinks, hospitality. Get some good ingredients and booze, some stuff for the kids, and then help make it happen.
Don’t bother trading things you would have already bought yourself.
Unless you’re a child.
I agree entirely with this. This is why my social circle (and most of my family) has a "no gifts" rule around gift-giving holidays and events (children excepted). But not everyone follows that.
I’m happier now than I was playing their game. The only time I do gifts now are because I genuinely, altruistically, want to share something.
And that is the sort of gift that actually has meaning!
I frequently give gifts to my friends and family, but rarely around some sort of event. It happens when I see something that I know a particular person would love, so I get it and give it to them.
I think that makes the gift truly meaningful. Not because its actually personalized, but because it demonstrates that I was thinking about them at a time when I was not expected to be.
I'd rather get cash from my proverbial rich uncle, but I'd prefer a gift card from a friend. honestly my favorite way to exchange presents with friends is just to tell each other exactly what we want. then we each get a useful thing that reminds us of our friendship.