Last year, the adults in my immediate family put a limit on how much we'd spend on each other for Christmas. I think we picked around $20/person, when in the past we probably spent $75-100.
This has been good for us, mainly because it lowers the pressure of gift exchanges. There's a big difference between giving (and getting) an unwanted $10 item compared to an unwanted $50 item. The limit removes emphasis from the material value of the item and puts it more on the thought behind the gift.
Generally, I think gift-giving culture in the US is out of control and largely doesn't benefit the giver nor the recipient.
When I turned 18 (youngest member in my family), we decided to stop giving Christmas gifts altogether. That in itself is the best gift ever! While everyone around me is scrambling to get all their Christmas shopping done and stressing out right about now, I can sit back and totally relax.
Overall the article depicts a way of life that has become very foreign to me. All the presents I gave (and received) for birthdays in the last few years were a card + flowers/whiskey, and they were always well received. Alternatively, the birthday parties were picinic-style where everybody brought some dish and there wasn't any expectation of other gifts.
Since around the time of the Great Recession, my siblings, parents, cousins, etc., and I agreed to give gifts to each other only via one of those secret Santa methods with a limit of $40/gift. This has made things so much easier! We only have to gift something to a single recipient, making it less costlier, simplifying the gift idea hassle, and allowing us to focus less on the "shopping bonanza" and more on just enjoying our time together, etc.
I can't recall exactly why we started this "tradition" during the Great Recession but it was my Mom's idea...the funny part is that one might assume that one of us was hit by the recession (e.g. job loss, etc.), and that's why we started it...but thankfully none of us was negatively impacted. So, it wasn't because of any impact to any family member. I wonder if my Mom was just being prudent ahead of time? In any case, these secret Santa things are a good idea, not just for friends but also for family!
Honestly, it's just getting harder to participate without buying a bunch of junk. In my family we're keeping the tradition going, but the gifting part is getting harder as we're getting older. The stuff we want is becoming increasingly utilitarian so we don't want to wait, we'll just buy it on the spot. I'm planning to convince them to do either a secret Santa or a white elephant gift exchange next year.
It's especially fun to try to find gifts that are both terrible and awesome, like the box of 1-foot extension cords.
(One the one hand, it's a box of one foot extension cords; on the other, you quickly realize you need one per stupid power brick or unnecessarily weird shaped plug.)
I've done "white elephants" at a former job (though i think they called it a "yankee swap"), and that was so much fun! It literally was the highlight of the office holiday party...not so much for coolness of any of the gifts but the fun of all the good-natured scheming! Fun times!
But there’s also not many gifts I would want that only cost $20. Books, but that’s about it. A nice version of any material item seems to cost at least £30 ($40). What kind of gifts did people get?
I think people got consumeables (nuts, beer, wine, chocolates), media like books/movies, and a few practical things (e.g. my wife got a soil moisture tester because she's getting into gardening).
I agree that a lot of items aren't great at the $20 price point, but a family could pick any limit that makes sense for them. For us, we don't need many material items, so the lower limit seemed reasonable.
Personally, I enjoyed it because it felt like a shift away from the material value and towards thinking about what the person would actually enjoy.
This has been good for us, mainly because it lowers the pressure of gift exchanges. There's a big difference between giving (and getting) an unwanted $10 item compared to an unwanted $50 item. The limit removes emphasis from the material value of the item and puts it more on the thought behind the gift.
Generally, I think gift-giving culture in the US is out of control and largely doesn't benefit the giver nor the recipient.