Christmas shopping for completely different generations and personalities

I love love love the whole Christmas day experience. ny DD and family cone over for the day ( only live 5 miles away )

I place presents under the tree, about 6 or 7 each, maybe more. The tree is 6ft tall, decorated by all the family with Christmas music playing, drinks and mince pies.

The presents range from £ to ££, it doeant matter, to me its all about creating memories of fabulous, loving, happy, fun Christmas's.

I wrap maybe a cabbage or swede up, or maybe a bag of sprouts and take photo's of their faces when they rip the paper off hahahaha.

Ohhhh, and i dress for the day as an elf..... hahaha.

Rosalyn69

I usually buy lots of presents. This year I’m cutting back. One present each. It had all got too stressful.

Totally agree with this Rosalyn. We had the chat with the family earlier this week. No grownups presents and Amazon cards for the children. The children’s ages go from 2 up to 18, and much as I love them all I just can’t manage all the shopping, wrapping, etc. that I used to do.

Mr. B is the only one on my Christmas list this year

I ask everyone for a list of suggestions in early November, which is then circulated to everyone in the family Christmas bubble. There is no guarantee of receiving anything, and certainly not everything, on the list, but it takes the hassle out of shopping and ensures no unwanted gifts and the element of surprise remains on the day.

All my family are getting money this year from one of my late husbands ISAs. I'm sharing it out as his last gift to them. It would have been more but I don't know how much longer I have left myself. I could live another 20 years if I'm lucky. A lot of my female relatives lived to their late 80s. They are welcome to anything left over. I love Christmas shopping but it's hard as they get older. The Grands would rather have the money anyway. I have bought them all a humorous gift just so there's something to unwrap.

For adults, it' s food and drink, sometimes in a hamper. For children( albeit young adults), I pay for a plane ticket.

we use to do a family secret Santa for the adults but we stopped that as to many grandchildren to buy for.
I usually take the older 2 to the panto and try and take the others for a day out to something similar.
Most of what I get them is charity shop items picked up throughout the year, hate buying new. I also knit/sew/crochet/diamond art them an item each based on their latest crazes. This year they all have diamond art pictures I have been working on since Jan.

Merylstreep
Spot on.No adult presents.
Grandchildren get money.
DH and myself allocate money to ourselves and go treat ourselves in the sales if we want anything.

We are all agreed! We no longer buy gifts at Christmas for the adults. Gifts for children only.
Gifts are often exchanged between adults spontaneously throughout the year instead. Suits our families and it’s such a relief from the stress.

I used to think long and hard and buy presents I would love to receive.all has changed now. No contact with Ds#2 his partner and 3 GC anymore. DS#1 has virtually dropped from my compass over past 6 months due to some perceived sleight of his bird(used with sarcasm I believe) my 2step DS and laydeez are both well loved and are extremely normal ( no perceived sleights there) so my expenditure on others has shrunk considerably .so- we'll be treating our little selves big style forever.......or until #2 DS snaps out of his fug!

We put the money into holidays. For just yourselves?

We don't buy Christmas presents.
Call us Scrooges if you wish but it's not that we don't like Christmas.
There's only one person who gets a gift of cash, that way she can get what she wants without us having to guess and, more than likely, get it wrong.
Husband and I decided that, as we just buy what we want, when we want it, then it was pointless spending money for the sake of having a gift. We put the money into holidays.

We buy for our grown up children and partners plus 4 granddaughters. All has vouchers last year due to Covid and not travelling. This year we will do the same probably. Hubby and I buy each other a token gift as neither of us need much.

We do secret Santa (£30 spend) for the adults who are together on Christmas Day. The grandchildren are little so they are each getting toys, a book and a board game, all already bought. This year I’m going to buy consumables (thinking cheese hampers or chocolate) for any other households we buy for. I’m sending book tokens to other children on my list. The consumables are all I’ve still to purchase.

Fir the past couple of years, all the adults in the family do a Secret Santa with a limit of £30. Each person provides a list of suggested gifts they would like and 'Santa' distributes the list. That way everyone has one present to open and the focus can be on the children. Some years 'Santa' even provides tge labels and wrapping paper so only he knows who has bought which gift

Our kids range from adult to nine, so a very wide range. Plus our 'adopted' AC, who's military, so can't really keep much on them in the way of things.

The youngest kids are easiest. The AC are pretty simple, since I remember being that broke, so I know that nicer quality items than they can justify on their budget are welcome, and gift cards are always the right size and colour!

It's the teens that are the challenge, since what they want tends to be a huge budget breaker.

I've decided as I'm not able to shop now that my adults will get Trees planted by The Woodland Trust.( We are all trying to save the Planet). The grandchildren will get Money as they don't need tat from Gran.

I'll be buying for 21 people aged 6 weeks to 84 years. Most difficult is one adult son & DIL and eldest grandson. I'll do all my shopping online, won't be traipsing round the shops. I suppose I ought to get started on it.....

ds and his dds get money in cards as parcels are too expensive and i have no idea what they want anyway
my dd and her dds walked out on me just before last christmas and i have no idea where they are so they won't get anything.
my guy doesn't "do" christmas so there's a saving there.
so the only presents i buy are for my two friends so that's fairly easy ....... got one already.
so i think i get off very lightly!!

My daughter is amazing and will find things online for us to buy for her children and our other grandchildren. They are all teenagers now so we have no idea what they like.
Our budget is not large so I did wonder about giving each of our children £100.00 to use to take their spouses and children (they have 2 each) for a treat, be it cinema or out for a meal or a play or pantomime.

Sorry so many mistakes in my post. Note to self - read before posting!

Um really going to cut down this year. My family don’t want the clutter. Hiw many scarves, gloves and candles do people want? Am going to go for consumables like food hampers. Experience days are good but how many people actually never redeem they’re vouchers? I hate giving vouchers but I love receiving them. Am really struggling this year.

Off topic but can someone please explain all the family initials eg D1, DH, DIL, DD. Some are obvious but I must be a bit behind the times. What does the first D stand for? Many
thanks in advance (TIA!)

I rarely see presents being opened, and the thank yous are so general or not at all, that I don’t feel like giving anything this year. I expect I will, though, but it will probably be money.

We’ve done that the last couple of years. A lot less stressful and expensive. Obviously still get prezzies for the GC

I love buying and giving Christmas presents - well presents generally actually. I like to see people’s happy faces. I hate people saying ‘oh for Christmas I’d like this or that’! I like to buy presents that I think suit that person’s personality. I had used to love walking round the shops with all the lights and Christmas music and struggling home in the cold and dark with bags and bags of stuff , it was the start of the Christmas experience for me. However these days due to my health and most of the shops having closed down, I do my shopping on line. I try to use smaller independent traders to help them and because they sell more interesting items. But it’s still not the same as the proper Christmas shopping experience ?