When my kids were very little (before being able to read), I had different paper for each child. Then my husband and I could relax on the couch and they would know which gifts they could open without us having to read the tag on each one. (Am I lazy or what? ) It also makes wrapping go much faster if you have the gifts presorted by person and don't have to change paper for each gift. In our family, Santa brings each child one big thing and the rest of the gifts are from mom and dad. I buy special paper for the gifts from Santa (usually with pictures of Santa on it). I make gift tags with "special" writing and these gifts are placed under the tree separately for the other gifts. That paper never makes another appearance. Santa also leaves each child a letter about their behavior and accomplishments for the past year. It's getting harder to pull this off each year. Happy Holidays!

Interesting topic, especially since I am reading this on Christmas morning! I have my firm religious beliefs. I feel it is important for children to grow up knowing and understanding that all the world does not believe the same as they do. It instills tolerance of other peoples differences. That doesn't necessarily mean that I feel they should be taught this in the public schools. This is really the job of the parents and the leaders of the institutions the parents take their children to recieve their religious training. When a child understands what others believe it can give a sense of understanding of why their family believes the way they do. But tolerance of others and respect for the beliefs of other is something that does need to be taught. How one does this is a public school situation is tricky. I hope when you went to speak about Christmas, you explained that there are many branches of Christianity, such as Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, etc. and that they all believe that the birth of Christ marks the beginning of God's revelation of the path to salvation. I hope you finished that everyone's individual beliefs should ALWAYS be respected, whether or not they celebrate Christmas. Afterall, the person who's birth you were explaining taught tolerance via non-judgementalism.

Many of my ideas were hit by frugalwallflower and katlan. Personally, I don't like giving books unless the person is an avid reader who reads books many times over or are a book collector and you know what they want. Except of course something like coloring books or if they like the crossword puzzle books, word search* or something. Otherwise, books are the poster child for one-use clutter if they get used once. Why teach kids that? Cash is still a great gift. Gift cards are a distant second or third since so many gift cards just don't get used. Do you bake? With your handle, I assume you do. That age group loves cookies, bars, Krispie bars, brownies and much more. Nothing to be ashamed of giving a gift of food. Or mix it in with some of the other ideas. The real young with a coloring book, crayons or colored pencils and a plateful of goodies? Few wouldn't be in hog heaven. Younger would probably like Old Maid cards, and I don't know what classic board games go for these days but there might be an option too. The youngest ones should be very easy to stay under the $10 mark, even under $5 if you want to go the purchased present way. Older ones? Well, keep in mind they might be approaching driving age. Something for the car if they have one. A key fob, first aid kit or even tools. If they have a car, floor mats are usually needed. It's late to start now but if you're near Menards or Ace Hardware you can buy a lot of stuff free after rebate or super cheap after rebate. Examples, 25' tape measure, wrench sets, screwdriver sets, hats, t-shirts, etc. Flashlights are a great gift too. The little LED ones that go on a keyring are handy and useful. A decent flashlight is usable by most anyone. Other ideas for the older, near driving age, is an ice scraper for northern climate or sunshade for southern. Both can be had for a couple dollars. I'd say fire up the stove and oven. And look for some things they might need or find useful. I might sound like a broken record at times but I really believe in avoiding the trash presents, meaning the ones that are a waste of money since they won't be used, or won't be used more than once and will just wind up in the dumpster. Food and cash, most always get used and are still appreciated far more than the stores and "shopping addicted" want people to believe. *One year as part of the gift I made up some word search puzzles and gave to the kids and had a little contest. I made the younger ones easier puzzles than the older ones. WordPerfect had a feature in it that let you set up the puzzle and it would fill in random letters in the blank spaces so it was easy. I had a 1st, 2nd & 3rd place prize of $3, $2 an $1. (there were 3 kids so each got a token cash prize and I planned a small gift for each so each actually got the intended prize, but it was down as a prize for winning. They loved it.

Without a smiley face or other character combination, there's no way to tell if your first comment was serious or not. You've repeated a similar sentiment in your second post so I'm not sure what your intended meaning is for either. I believe you if you're saying that your experience is that greed and selfishness were rampant and visible throughout your travels in the business world. I'm wondering if the view that you're saying is common is coming from people who similarly are relating what they experienced themselves or just passing on what they've heard. I'm going to guess it's the second and that what you hear are really uninformed opinions on this topic. I hear a lot of those too. In my career as an advisor to medium and large tech companies, bad conduct was pretty rare. Which was why I've responded to your comment as i have, I think it's unfair to use too broad a brush to suggest that one person's misconduct suggests that misconduct is widespread. I don't know about Canada where you are, and you may know nothing about the US, but American laws concerning business integrity and financial honesty are pretty strong and are seriously enforced. The guy was arrested and charged, that's the result of an investigation and enforcement of the law.