When do you stop buying Christmas gifts for nieces/nephews? When did your aunts/uncles stop?

[Anonymous]

Do you ever 'age out' of giving/receiving Christmas gifts? I have lots of aunts and uncles, but we were estranged from them, so I never received anything. Now that I have nieces and nephews of my own, it's getting expensive. How old is too old?

[Anonymous]

I am planning on stopping at 18.

[Anonymous]

17 is your last year for gifts in our family.

[Anonymous]

18

[Anonymous]

18, but one nephew has such a fractured family that at 23 we still give $$ and cards etc. he is such a good guy and want to make sure he knows he has family

[Anonymous]

All the adults in my family receive presents as the family tree is rather small. However, my grandparents had a rule of no more presents after 18. They had to make that rule because my cousins would only ever visit on Christmas and their birthdays(cousins bday not grandparents)

[Anonymous]

We have a small extended family and all kids are now in college. I think it's perfectly fine for us to keep on with the gifts at least until they graduate.

One of my aunts, in her late 80s, still sends me birthday gifts. It's so sweet.

[Anonymous]

It depends. Are you getting other adults presents or have you pretty much only ever gotten presents for the kids? Do you have a lot of neices/nephews? Are you close with them?

[Anonymous]

13:02 here. Just wanted to add that if you don't want to do presents, maybe you could start a new tradition. Perhaps an evening full of Christmas fun? Getting together with your adult nieces/nephews to go look at lights and then baking cookies and drinking hot cocoa could mean a lot more to them than presents.

[Anonymous]

How is this communicated though? Do you (the aunt/uncle/gift giver) say to the kids or their parents "So we think at 18 it's time to end the gift giving."

Or, are the parents of the 18+ year old kids supposed to communicate this? How is this understanding shared?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How is this communicated though? Do you (the aunt/uncle/gift giver) say to the kids or their parents "So we think at 18 it's time to end the gift giving."

Or, are the parents of the 18+ year old kids supposed to communicate this? How is this understanding shared?

Ideally this is something addressed long before 18 hits. Perhaps you could say "this year instead of presents, let's begin a tradition of xyz" Christmas isn't about presents.

[Anonymous]

Seriously, way too much emphasis is being placed on presents. Just don't buy them presents if you don't want to. They're grown, I think they can adjust.

[Anonymous]

Ugh why is this so difficult for people? Why would you stop gifting just because someone is an adult? Does the holiday just end because you hit 18? The only thing you need to manage is their monetary expectation. So give them a $10, $20, $30 gift--whatever--and just maintain that status quo.

[Anonymous]

On a separate note...are you ok with getting your younger nieces/nephews presents while the older ones sit there giftless?

[Anonymous]

When my brother and I had kids, aunts stopped giving us gifts and started giving to the kids only. My cousins are childless (in their 30s) and my mom still gives them gifts. Not sure what she will do when one of them has a child.