I've put this in the Antimustachian Wall of Shame and Comedy, because we are actually increasing our gift-giving this year and I wanted some advice.
The backstory is that my family (parents, siblings and their families) scaled way back on gift-giving at Christmas years ago. We might buy my mom or dad a gift if the perfect thing occurred to us, but there was no expectation of it and they were generally inexpensive. My sisters and I agreed to forgo gift-giving, and instead our kids (cousins) would exchange gifts. It meant that our kids would each have about three presents to open on Christmas, most of the time the adults had none or maybe one or two, and the emphasis was on other things (a wonderful meal, being together, etc.)
BUT, as the kids have gotten older and don't want anything other than video games, iTunes cards, etc., there really is no joy in giving anymore at the holidays. It used to be fun watching the little kids unwrap and get very excited about wooden castles and Legos and other wonderful gifts, and we all lived a little vicariously through them and are missing the fun of gift-giving.
The other piece of the story is that my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2013, and was in hospice at this time last year, with little expectation of making it until Christmas. She hung in there, but ended up in the hospital right before Christmas with what they thought was a stroke or metastasis to the brain, and though she got out of the hospital right before Christmas, my sister, her husband, DH, the kids, and I got a stomach bug and spent Christmas quarantined in a one-bathroom cottage to keep all of our nastiness away from my mom. It was a shitty (pun intended) Christmas, and I was so sad at the thought of missing my mom's last Christmas.
Surprisingly, my mom rallied, got kicked out of hospice, and is doing awesome (all things considering), and we all want to go a little bigger for Christmas this year. We have decided that the adults will exchange gifts for the first time in over a decade. But we don't want each adult to have to get a gift for every other adult, so we're looking for something that is a little more fun and animated than drawing names. Does anyone do anything fun with white elephant gifts, or picking and stealing gifts, or any other general silliness that my family normally avoids like the plague (we all feel like a little levity this year)?