Its sad to hear how some people can cause the holidays, supposedly the happiest days of the year to be the most dreaded. My huge family use to do the birthday thing, and nthe anniversary thing and so forth and so on until one year about 8 nyeaqrs ago, my mom saud: "enough! there are just too many kids and people now with kids marrying and their kids, no more, its out of control." So now everyone deals with their own kids, grandkids etc. and the family gets together for a huge Christmas Eve party at my one cousins home but everyone brings their signature dish and each person brings a $5.00 (only one each)wrapped gift to put into Santas giant bag under the tree and on the way out everyone takes a gift. Works well for those that attend. A lot of us are many thousands of miles away and don't go home, too far an too expensive. I think a line has to be drawn and if you don't draw the line where does it all end? The reatives were mad at my mom for awhile but now are all happy the way things worked out for everybody.....