Scaling back presents

[Myshitisreal]

Years ago, myself and my husband decided to really scale back on presents in general It all gets a little bit crazy and we don't want to be crazy consumerists. I'm a massive Christmas lover and my husband isn't (he never celebrated it as a child so it's alien to him).

We decided we would prefer to have experiences together (than more tat we don't need or presents simply because) so on birthdays and Christmas we have a no present no stress rule. We put money together and go away for a few days, or keep it for dinners out etc. It's worked beautifully for years for us. We don't have kids but any kids in our lives I still buy gifts for. I don't expect them to understand reducing consumerism etc so that's perfectly OK.

A relative has ignored this (or forgotten) so I spoke with her yesterday to say please don't worry about buying us birthday or Christmas pressies. I explained we're reducing the stress and keeping the magic in Christmas, and more importantly removing the stress for those who feel they need to buy us presents. She was a bit unsure but seems to have accepted it perfectly well.

I just wondered if anyone out there might have wanted to do the same thing but feel they can't? There's enough time left to prevent people buying. My mum was a single parent and I watched her get into backbreaking debt for years to get us presents. That has definitely changed my thought process. The only person I now buy for is my Mum, she was harder to convince and loves presents (🙄) but that's ok with me. She's also exceptionally hard to buy for but that's a different thread altogether 👀

Christmas is so much more magic without the stress to be honest. I always decorate at least two people's houses to help out. I've more time for festive baking. I'm not in hideous debt for months. It's just a whole lot easier. People around us say how they wish they could do the same thing.... They can! Anybody can. Even if you have a large group of family you buy for, doing a secret santa helps reduce the load significantly. I like to crochet decorations and they have gone down well so I will continue to do that. I've even bought Christmas wool 😂 🎅

I just thought I would post this in the hope that it inspires someone else to scale back in their own way.

yep - we do presents for each other & for DSS. My sisters & husbands are coming to us this year & they get a present for DSS but we don't do adult presents - everyone brings some food or booze instead & it so much less stressful.

Before my husband passed away we used to go to visit his father for big family get together at Christmas - about 17 plus various girlfriends and kids. We were happy to get presents for his parents and the kids but felt it was a bit OTT getting all his brothers and girlfriends (who most likely we had never met) gifts, and I hated the waste of people buying me gift boxes of toiletries which I’d never use. So we suggested that we either just keep presents for the kids, or perhaps pick one name out of a hat and just buy a present for that one person, so everyone got something. It did not go down well!
We restricted each other to a present of £50 or less.

That's such a shame it didn't go down well 😔 people do seem very resistant to change in certain ways. At least you limited it. The thought of buying presents for someone I've rarely/never met is just so alien 👾. I really don't like the cheap cosmetic sets either and they just go to a charity shop. Do the girlfriends buy you back also???

Booze and food sounds much more my language! Any special recipes you would like to recommend?? I've got some great ideas from the Christmas breakfast thread 😊🎅

We will start buying bits this month food /drink wise. That way there's no big shocking bill.

Pipandmum I'm sorry for your loss also ♥

I'd love suggestions for how to broach this.

We spend Xmas with PILs who are very lovely but accustomed to giving lots and lots of gifts that often end up unused. I'd love to just receive a small token rather than piles of things that might be wasted.

DH is utterly conflict-averse so won't say anything or provide any support.

With the relationship i have with PILs it feels awkward to say 'do you mind if we do less gifts this year' , plus presumably it brings them pleasure so feels mean to curtail that by suggesting no gifts for adults.

It was suggested one year in my family (by another sibling) that we do Secret Santa for the adults, this also did not go down well!! Two siblings rebelled so the pressure was still there to return gifts. I do normally love buying gifts but that year I’d returned from maternity leave and completed on a house in December (so was broke!). I’ve stuck with buying everyone gifts but it is expensive. However, I’m also conscious that two siblings don’t have children or partners yet but gifts for my husband and child. So I feel bad they buy three gifts to my one! I’m with you in principle though, I don’t spend what I can’t afford and would hate anyone to do so on me or my family. I’m trying to start early this year to firstly spread the cost but also then spend time enjoying Christmas in December doing stuff rather than shopping. Which explains why I’m in this board in August, this is unheard of for me!!

Why not suggest a secret santa? We were discussing Christmas the other day and thought it would be fun to change things up by doing a secret santa, mention agreed budget etc.

While discussing Christmas, casually mention how you were reading about food banks and were keen to put together a hamper/online shop to give to those in need. Maybe ask if they want to contribute 'instead of presents'

Say you're cutting right back on presents this year to try it out and focus more on spending time with family and friends ie memories over presents (ie ££££). Make it clear 'we're just buying our kids and family kids this year so please don't buy us presents. Get agreement as well.

Say you want to reduce consumerism, remove stress from Christmas.

Say you're trying to reduce your overall Christmas spend/carbon footprint so this year will be buying x y z.

Basically you need to just decide on your approach and go for it. People are very uncomfortable at first but it works fantastically if everyone buys into it and agrees 🎅

I guess try to think of their objections and be prepared.

Is a tough one depending on the individuals, but it really shouldn't be a big deal. It breaks my heart to see people spend so much, it gets more and more carried away. I know someone who buys their doctor a bloody expensive designer mens toiletries kit. 👀 😔

Teatoast, that's annoying people ignoring and buying. You could make it very clear - please respect our wishes as we would be very embarrassed to be bought presents we hadn't returned. I'm sorry but I find it so disrespectful. If people then go ahead and buy presents against your wishes, I'd brassneck it and not return them. Thank them enthusiastically. At a later time reiterate the new no gift policy and they will get the message.

I'd say to your sibling - listen, it's really unfair you buying 3 presents so please don't even worry about getting us a present from now on. We really want things to be more fair so would love it if you could start from this year.

Great going on preparing this year 😁🎅

Fgs 2139 was in Paragraphs as different ideas 👀 it reads as jumble sorry 🙏

Tried to broach this subject with in-laws and it goes ignored. Every year they buy us bags of gifts which is just stuff neither of us would ever use, we charity shop most of it. Last Christmas I mentioned we should do 1 gift each, they arrived with bags full, ended up being blunt when after opening two bags of chocolates (I’m diabetic!), ankle weights for walking from Aldi (?!?!), I opened a gift of Harry Potter DVDs and said that I have never liked Harry Potter and don’t watch tv, they were hugely offended and I ruined Christmas. I might not mind getting gifts if they weren’t as shit right enough.

Chocolate for a diabetic???? Sounds like they are buying presents for their own purpose rather than yours if that Makes sense. Really 😔

I have a gift giver who buys me things they really want for themselves. Really not my style at all.

Don’t get me started!

For similar reasons we decided to cut down. I hate Christmas tat and MIL particularly does this quantity not quality thing 😩. So we suggested that people not buy us gifts but donate to charity. We did the Oxfam gifts thing for them.

The fuss it caused!

My mother and MIL both complained that they had not received a present. MIL went further and told me that SIL (woman in her 40s) CRIED when she opened her envelope because “it was for someone else, not a gift for her”. Yes, for babies to be vaccinated overseas you selfish wackaloon. SIL’s children had received gifts and her eldest apparently offered to swap gifts with her so she’d stop crying.

WTAF?

And then the gifts to us. SIL doesn’t send anything for DH anyway so that was that but MIL kept whining about how she didn’t know a charity or how to donate 🧐. DH then announced that his family “don’t do charity”. About a year later one of SIL’s children was going on a school trip and MIL announced she’d finally paid our charity gift... she paid for this child to go to Alton Towers with the school.

Er right.

My mother chose a charity that politically she knew I’d hate, whatever, her choice.

All in all it was shit.

But we didn’t get tat!

We've decided this year to do a secret Santa for all the adults in the family. There are 10 of us. We have set a budget of approximately £40 per person. And using a secret Santa app we can leave a wish list that is viewable by our 'santa' so hopefully less stress and less consumerism. We are still buying for the children in the family but books/ clothes.

It has been greeted with great enthusiasm.

Oh god moonflower thus reminds me of the Christmas when I bought my parents (much wealthier than me, in both cash and stuff) that type of gift and they still go on about it ffs. I can understand if they'd got zero gifts overall but they had loads of stuff bought by others to open.

@Moonflower12 which Secret Santa App was it. We do this with a lot of us every year and the wish list would be great and save my SIL a lot of additional messaging!

As someone who loves choosing gifts for people and buying Christmas presents, just a perspective from the other side. It's like a hobby that I love and I would be gutted if my family said this. However I would have no problem at all by not getting gifts back, in fact several people don't reciprocate and we're altogether on Christmas day too. That's fine, I don't mind. But please don't ask me not to buy. I don't get into debt and some gifts may only cost £3 but they're thoughtful and looked for throughout the year (so get bargains).

@jo10000 Sorry but I really don't think it's fair to ask people to accept gifts if they've said they don't want to, simply because you enjoy bargain hunting. Even if you genuinely wouldn't mind getting nothing in return you must know a lot of people would feel quite awkward to always receive and never give.

You say they're chosen with thought but that also attaches a certain amount of "emotion" to the gift. It's difficult then for the recipient to choose to not keep, wear, display the item that they may not have wanted in the first place, for fear of hurting your feelings.

If it really is a little hobby for you then there are plenty of charity campaigns at Christmas seeking gifts for people who might otherwise receive nothing. Aside from Christmas there are elderly people in care homes all year round who might rarely have a visitor to bring them anything and might love to receive a small gift. There are also women and children who may have left an abusive home with only the clothes on their back who would probably appreciate anything.

Sorry if those sound a bit "worthy" but if it's the pleasure of shopping and giving you're looking for then you can indulge your hobby without making people feel obliged to paste on a smile and thank you enthusiastically for something they would have preferred not to receive. Otherwise the giving is a lot more about the giver than the recipient.

Happy for you to express your opinion. No one in my family has asked not to receive a gift. I said I would be gutted, not that I wouldn't respect their wishes. I was just giving a different viewpoint, obviously not welcome on a Christmas thread.

There will always be a difference is opinion, I just wanted to share my positive experience, and try to inspire others to try should they wish to.

I love Christmas. I have a knitted Christmas 🎄 hat. Many head accessories. I do go a bit crazy 🤪 love it. I've found these bits of scrap in going to turn into Christmas mittens. I'll see if I can get a pic, bring some 🎅 feelings back to the thread 😁

Bugger did my last post come up. do pics work on the app

We are the same.
Adult dcs get money ( we don't see them at Xmas) and we do one small gift for each other.
We don't need any more "stuff" and certainly not tins of chocolates, dodgy reed diffusers and novelty gifts. I always did really good stockings for my dcs till recently, when they suggested it was time to stop.

I love picking out personal gifts, but this year I'm only going to buy for maybe two people at the most- my aunt and another friend. I know m0y siblings won't have a problem with this though.

We scaled down years ago. The consumerism is shocking. I am amazed that people are starting threads about Christmas now and asking how many stocking fillers people have already. Novelty socks and buy of tat 🙁.

We buy three gifts for the wider family and then for each other (family of three). We’d ended up swapping gift cards with ILs because they were so specific about what they wanted and it was just like doing their shopping for them, and then DH said it was silly ebcUse they have always given us gift cards, so why even bother?! One person objected (and I assume it was because she’d send a £5 or £10 gift card to DH and we’d give her £40 or something) but everyone else was on board.

Not only is this a relief, no house full of tat, no spending hours shopping, packing, posting, delivering, we get to enjoy a great Christmas doing fun things with the money. Lapland, arctic circle, Paris, New York, this year Sydney, for New Year, and donate a healthy sum.

It’s special because Christmas is special. It doesn’t need all the stuff on top.

By “three gifts for the wider family” I don’t mean three gifts each! I mean three people receive gifts, that’s all. One is a child, one is elderly and can’t get out to do their own shopping much and one is overseas and appreciates British food that she can’t get.

DH and I now buy for five people each as I have dropped buying for a few people and DF & MIL have now died.

It feels a lot more manageable than the 20+ people I used to buy for. Last year I asked DH and DD if we could have a no present Christmas but they were horrified!