How to tactfully say we dont want to do gifts anymore.

[moanycoo]

Has anyone stopped this silly gifting in their family? I am sick of wasting time and money, stressing and guessing what to buy adults. I am also fed up of receiving crap I dont want or need.
Is there a tactful way to say- No more gifts for the adults in the family?
Isnt it about being together?

We stopped buying for adults once the next generation came along. My parents still gave us money and we all bought them a small present though. Nowadays I just buy for the grand nieces and nephews until they turn 7 or 8. Still get my own children presents though. Even though they are 20 somethings. So only buying for 4 or 5 people. It's so much easier.

just say it. message if necessary. I texted my sister and sister in law and just said, look, all the kids (apart from my youngest who is 16) are now adults.
I don't mind still getting them something specific if they want it, and also happy to gift money to them (the kids) but lets not bother with the mutual exchange of random shite none of us want this year, They very enthusiastically agreed to it!

If I could go back I wish we’d done a secret santa. Instead we buy for the kids and any adults without kids. Which, as people have more and more kids has become very expensive and time consuming. We also have friends who buy for us, I’d like to stop that but they ignore.

We still do them, except to Dbro and SiL, who are Grinch/Scrooge combined - but except for adult dds it’s small edibles only, preferably the ‘treat’ sort they probably wouldn’t buy for themselves. Certainly no ‘stuff’, though I did include for a DSis a book I thought she’d enjoy.

Quite a long time ago my brother, SIL and I 'agreed a truce' as he called it, and only exchange cards now. We none of us need anything, in fact are constantly decluttering, so it is a relief not to have to think about presents or arrival of unwanted stuff.

I think you have to get in the head of the people doing the gifting.

Some people love doing it, choosing and buying presents. Others hate it.

It should normally be obvious from the gift and maybe listening to them talk about the gift giving process whether they would be happy to enter a mutual non buying pact.

We discussed this a couple of years ago when present opening took so long it was boring, but then forgot. My adult DD mentioned this week that we should switch to just the children next year and perhaps just sweets for adults.

Difficulty is 86 yo grandma who buys the worst gifts but insists she still receives, and youngest DD who is 18 and at uni and hasn't been able to find a job, who rightly pointed out that her siblings have had over 30 years of presents.

Will need to all chat about it when we get together.

Absolutely sick of it. But when I tried to have this conversation my dad went absolutely nuts. We only have a small family which doesn’t help. I wish I had siblings to form a united force against this consumerist madness.

Sadly I had the opposite experience where I got berated for being ungrateful by my father.

We told my side of the family that we think it's time to stop buying for each other as there are lots of kids now too. So we do a secret Santa for the kids. No more adult gifts. His side of the family just got told we're skint and won't be buying presents anymore and haven't done for the past few years. I was so fed up getting asked what I wanted then getting nothing of the sort and it was utter tat. Just be blunt.

We have a massive family, and not everyone gets on. We do a (carefully engineered!) secret Santa so only buy for one person, with a budget of £10.

We dont have any set rules in our house it just varies year on year. We always buy for our daughter obviously, and I do try to buy at least one thing for my partner every year. This year however iv bought him a lovely bunch of presents even including some little useful stocking filler gifts and 3 bigger ones all stuff he would like and make use of.

I also get something for my mum and get things to her from my DD because I know she loves it. I also gift my 2 closest friends children money and they do the same for my DD, and help buy gifts for partners nieces but he has to sort his own families presents out.

I enjoy gift giving and now I will start getting things earlier in the year and will put them aside its so much better that way.

Suggest an alternative. Me and my sisters but ourselves tickets for an event to go to together.

We do a Secret Santa with DH's family. Proposed this with my family this year. They were having none of it. They buy everyone a gift from the adults, and then from the children. There are 14 of us. If I dropped out, I think it would upset the dynamics too much. It's not so much the money for me, but the headspace. We're the only family where both adults work full-time, and have a child's birthday close to Christmas. I no longer enjoy this time of year and need to find another solution.

@moanycoo
If you enjoy their company you could say some like “ Instead of gifts next year why don’t we arrange something to do together”.
This could be anything from an event, a meal out or just going for drinks together. Basically imply that you’d prefer to spend on seeing them
in some capacity, rather than finding gifts to wrap.

My brothers were obviously using it as a way to continue bullying me. The year I overheard them talking about whether my face was upset at the yet another gift of a scarf, was the year I said lets not do them again for adults except our parents. I'm pretty sure dad also overheard because he said he didnt think we would talk after they had gone. I didnt say anything but thought well we dont really talk now.

Far too late to do it this year.

It’s really not fair to do it a week before Christmas because you are having trouble thinking of things when for all you know the people you are trying to buy for have already put the effort in on your behalf.

I have been on the receiving end of this and it’s not nice. Luckily someone else appreciated the beautiful knitted scarf I had put a great deal of thought and time into for the person who announced they would be doing no presents, as if they were doing everyone a favour!

I was speaking to a friend of mine about this. She had been doing a secret Santa with apox 12 other adult family members for years. The amount they had to spend had rissen over the year's.
This year my friend decided she had enough of this. Her and another sibling are both on a limited incomes. As well as the money aspect it was getting recycled items and poor gifts.

My friend chatted to the other sibling on a limited income. She said I don't want to do secret Santa this year. It to much cash for us both and I am sick of the poor gifts. She told the rest of the family and got moans from some people. The same people that moaned have good incomes. My friend said the rest of the family could still do secret Santa if they wanted.

My friend buys a few small well thought out gifts for the sibling on a limited income and their families along with presents for her parents. She will use the money she normally spends on secret Santa on something for herself.

I don't think you can change things this year but I would tell people next September or October that you want a secret Santa or to cut back on the gifts. I think with the current cost of living it's understandable why you want to do this.

“How does everyone feel about stopping exchanging gifts next year? We’ve all got enough “stuff” and what I most value about Christmas is your company more than the gifts”

If you aren't giving joyfully because you want to give something nice to someone you love then do not give. There's certainly no point giving grudgingly or resentfully.

Send round an email to let everyone know that you aren't giving any gifts this year, and if anyone feels moved to give to you then the only thing you want is a donation in your name to [name of favourite charity] - and you'll be happy to match that with a donation to a charity of their choice if they let you know.

For some people, the joy of Christmas is all in the pleasure of giving gifts with an open heart and no expectation of reciprocation. If you don't get a kick out of that then of course you can opt out.

I get it. I said to my mum this year that I think it’s silly that we buy pointless gifts for adults every year. I said id rather just but for my partner and child. But her stance was that gift giving is part of Christmas and if we didn’t do it, My grandma and auntie would have no presents as their husbands are no longer with us. And I get that. But also think it’s daft every year buying them the same old candles and lavender soap. But I guess it’s nice for them to have something to open, and it doesn’t put me out too much.

We buy presents for the children in the family only and arrange for a nice day out somewhere.
Works well for us

just make sure people who get no presents aren’t left without!!!

My DHs side of the family have a strict £30 budget for presents. They also don't do any spontaneous gifting - i.e. they won't just buy a present for someone because they've seen it and think the recipient will like it. We have to provide a list of what we want, and it has to total exactly £30. If we don't send them a list of things we want, we get cash or a voucher.

A few years ago my DH asked for a cooking gadget. It was £22. He got given the cooking gadget plus an £8 Amazon voucher. Last year DH's GPs asked us for a £30 Waitrose voucher - fine by me. The gift we got in return was... a £30 John Lewis voucher!! I find the whole thing completely pointless and quite stressful!!

Every year we suggest just forgoing the whole thing, but always met with refusal. We've even said that we would be happy to just get them a present, no need for them to buy us one. But that 'isn't fair'...