I tried and got a lot resistance. Seems like a no brainier to me.

People who want to do this already do. Some do both donations and gifts for their loved ones.

You can’t control what other people do, all you can do is ask. At this point you should tell your family it’s what you’re going to do and if they insist on getting you something ask them to donate as your gift. Or you could ask for gift cards to grocery stores and then buy and donate to a food pantry.

In our household we try to spend time together, have some good food, take photos to remember. We’ve talked to various family about not sending gifts to different degrees of success. One person really “gets it.” One launched a big guilt trip. And various others ate in between. I’m fine with rocking the boat. The vast majority of stuff that gets sent out way isn’t anything I want or need. I have other things to do in life than shepherd random items that I never asked for.

I started this over a decade ago and it vastly improved being forced to participate in Xmas.

Now it is like having two Thanksgivings.

Welcome to parenthood

I'm sorry but I do find the resistance from people that enjoy Christmas pretty funny.

Ahh Christmas, a time of happiness and gift giving. To the poor??? Oh nonononono why would I do that on Christmas??

My wife and I are already not very accepted by our homophobic conservative family, so we didn’t really ask. We started giving donations in family members’ names to things we felt they would care about, and then the Christmas Day gifts are cards with the story of what that donation did for someone. It seemed to go over well enough but of course all families are different.