I would not be at all surprised to see [Christmas spending] begin to shrink in the years ahead, or at least fall below the rate of growth. My reasoning is simple. I want people to stop giving me stuff. I’ve got too much stuff already.

...we have more clothes than we can wear, more DVDs than we can watch, more food than we can eat, and more gizmos than we can figure out how to use. We don’t need any more, and increasingly, we don’t want any more.

...This makes gift giving quite difficult. Most of the people I know are in the same boat, which means finding something they want to have, but don’t already possess, it really hard. We gave a lot of gift cards this year, because the alternative is to spend time finding something we think might be appropriate, and half the time the recipient just pretends to like or want it when the first thing they think when they see it is who they can re-gift it to, in order to get rid of it as fast as possible. - Buddy Hollis on QandO

I endorse this fully.

We just moved, and there is nothing like moving for causing you to question why you have all this "stuff". We've actually managed to keep things fairly focused (moving every year will do that), but even so, we've got a lot of "stuff". And what did we get for Christmas this year? Despite explicitly and repeatedly asking for "not more stuff", we got... stuff. Mostly pointless. I hate to call out any gift in particular in the unlikely event the givers reads this, but mostly it was just... stuff.

I'll tell you what I did appreciate, though. I appreciate the people who got us giftcards, in accordance with what we asked for. (As with any new home, there's some things that need doing, and hardware gift cards are helpful. I don't even know yet what all they will be spent on, but they shall certainly be put to good use.) I appreciate my sister's gift this year, a homemade sign to put near our door, customized with our name and pets. Now that's a nice gift!