I'm genuinely sorry that the tone in that reply was unnecessarily brusque. Should not post from my phone after a sleepless night! I was reacting to the idea that every single person you give to was getting the same thing, but you probably didn't mean literally everyone - everyone in a group of friends, maybe?
I do increasingly feel, though, that a lot of gift-giving at Christmas is utterly pointless, but thinking about it that's probably because I take what is perhaps a simple, literal approach and see it as X attempting to give Y something that Y will like and be able to make use of, and Y doing the same for X. Unfortunately sometimes this doesn't work out and X gives Y, a recovering alcoholic, a bottle of whisky, or Y gives X, a man with a full beard, a bottle of aftershave, or A gives B, a lifelong vegan, some local honey. Meanwhile C spends a lot of time, effort and money finding the ideal thing for D (which D privately hates and re-gifts at the first opportunity) and D gives C a gift set of toiletries that C knows is on a 3 for 2 offer at every retailer in the country and which C can't use because of a long-standing allergy.
However, I suspect for a lot of other people what is actually happening with an exchange of gifts is more symbolic. X gives something to Y and that tells Y that X has a certain regard for Y, or is conscious of a relationship between them that necessitates an exchange of gifts. What the gift actually is is not always that important. The really significant bit is that they are giving each other something.
The lucky sane, balanced people who are capable of thinking 'Oh dear, Beardie Alan gets aftershave from Auntie Jean again - what is she like? Ha ha. Never mind, she means well' or 'Crikey, has Terry really forgotten that Chris was in the Priory this time last year? Better have a quiet word with both of them and smooth that one over' are the ones who come out of Christmas unconsumed by bitter thoughts. I have no bitter thoughts now either, but that's because my family has basically stopped bothering with gifts and fortunately for me we don't have friends we exchange gifts with either.
Anyway, getting back to the subject of the thread, I saw a thread on a work Secret Santa a while back where several people said they no longer had one and instead everybody was asked to bring in donations for a food bank. That seemed like a sensible idea to me. Would it work for OP's group, maybe not this year, but next?