I don't by Christmas music by pop stars I don't really listen to Christmas music anyways but my wife is sucker for that stuff LOL

The consumerism aspect? I completely agree - it's gotten out of hand. I'm not really a Christmas or holiday enthusiastic regardless, although my wife is. If I was single you probably wouldn't even know it was a holiday in my house.

My wife's family does a gift exchange every year where they draw names and you're assigned to give somebody a gift. they always set a dollar value of let's say $25. it completely irritates me that my wife feels like she has to even up every purchase completely.

if she buys one of the kids a present that's $27 another kids present is $19 she feels like she has to run out and get something else for $8 to make sure she balances the dollar value to everybody. From a financial aspect this becomes gift inflation because if she overspent on one then she starts overspending on all the rest of them to level up and pretty soon instead of the $25 limit now, we're at a $35.

I'm not trying to sound like a scrooge but she stops focusing on the gift itself and is focusing on the dollar value. This isn't an issue now- we're doing pretty well in life fortunately. Far better than many people in this country. But there was a time when we were very very squeezed financially and this used to really set off alarm bells for me when she would do this.

I will be cooking Thanksgiving dinner for about 16 family members this year. Typically my wife's family does their holiday dinners potluck and everybody brings way too much food and then you end up taking bags or tupperware of it home where it sits and eventually gets thrown away. This really bothers me because I hate wasting food. It's just the way I grew up with a single dad trying to raise me and my two sisters. We didn't waste in our house.