Originally Posted by
steveman518
I think first and foremost that it would end up requiring a lot of extra effort from wharvey to chase down delinquents more often and to keep track of who needs to receives gifts when. wharvey also noted the lack of gifts being shipped, so having more time to shop and ship would probably be better for most people. Of course participants can always request gifts by particular dates, but having one official date for the whole thing I think helps simplify it.
I also think (and hope) that most, if not all, participants participate in this in the spirit of holiday gift exchange and that it's not exclusive or religiously motivated. If we started doing observed holidays, then we would end up with so many deadlines for different people unless you draw a line somewhere. For example, the next holiday I tend to observe after Thanksgiving is the lunar new year, with the next one being Feb 16 2018. If you want to make it nondenominational then you could request that this be changed to the "Flyertalk Holiday Gift Exchange" and set a (mostly) nondenominational deadline of the new (Gregorian) year. (hopefully not too OMNI)
You seem to have misinterpreted what I said. I'm not asking for a comprehensive range of holidays to be included, but this year there have a been a couple posts mentioning Hanukkah. While there are potentially dozens of religious traditions represented here, I recognize that to include every one is not feasible and trying to would be a logistical nightmare. Nor did I suggest that overall deadline, December 25, be changed. But if one more question was added to the list, "Which DECEMBER holiday do you observe?" those who wished to honor giftees of the Jewish faith could, at their discretion, ship in time for Hanukkah. It doesn't need to be made more complicated than that.