I have a big family, and it just keeps getting bigger! (adding a new baby in early Jan and 4 new family members to it this year, yay!!) Immediate family consisting of just my brothers and sisters, their spouses and children, and my mom number 33 people. 4 grandkids 18-20 years old, 14 grandkids age newborn-14, and 13 adults
When the first 4 grandkids were little, we bought for them. As we started adding a new grandkid every year (yes, we have added one almost every year for the past 14 years!), it got to be too much. We were spending $10-15 on junky gifts just so each kid would get something, and it was becoming more of a race to the finish instead of a meaningful thought. So we decided to draw names instead. I have three kids, so I picked three names. My brother has two kids, so he picked two names, etc etc. We set a limit of $30-50 for each gift, so now instead of buying 12 $10 gifts, I was buying 3 $40-50 gifts that I could take time to really think about and pick out something that the kids would love!
For the adults, and now we have 4 brand new "adults" with DS18 and his three oldest cousins, we were starting to run into that gift-card exchange problem, too, so we decided that each family will make a gift basket, and we would do a White Elephant exchange with them. It's been so fun to come up with a theme for our baskets over the years, and there have been some hilarious ones like the "Getting Lucky" basket which played on both the "gambling" side of getting lucky with lotto tickets, and magic 8-ball, a dice game, etc, plus a pink feather boa, a pair of lacy panties, whipped cream vodka, and other "getting lucky" novelties for the other play on words lol I think that was my favorite one ever!
This year, I went with a patriotic theme, so I have a red white and blue tote as my basket, and have been filling it with different flag/America themed stuff. The clearance sales after the summer holidays were amazing! I will usually spend between $75 and $100 on the basket. It's one of the most fun parts of our Christmas Party!