I was wondering the opposite. Im not used to go trough this page, but I did this year and I will continue.
Being on Europa , hanging out on American shards looking for traders made very long nights. Im not a big trader but I made one person on Atlantics happy with an icy patch of the rare kind. I got no rare but I had felt guilty if I had been luckier than my trading partner , who obviously was alot more comitted to this (Avenhar)
From that trade I learnt there were two rare items this year so not much use to ask for anything but boxes with icy patches in. I had six characters on Napa,found noone to trade with there , opened my gifts, saw I had nothing good there. That way I dont need to trade that shard. (im very busy in UO and time is precious)
My last shard was Lake Superior .. think I had 18 chars and I thought it would be rational to open the gifts and just trade the important ones. I saw others doing that and it would again save time. I got two rare boxes but I dont find anyone to trade them with. One guy wanted to trade one box but he went silent.
With gifts like this im going to make more characters for next year.
But you ppl here thinks its better to trade all gifts than to be rational and just trade the important ones?
If your only goal is to get the rare icy patches and gift boxes, then trading like you suggest does meet this goal. However, this has not always been the case, as some years did not have any really rare items, and some people are actually going after "complete" collections, rather than just trying to corner the market on the rares. This year, I am sure a number of people are trying to complete set of holiday cards, whether trying to get all of the dev names and/or colors, and in trading as you suggested, this just wouldn't be very possible.
I actually plan to get several of each of the other items (eggnog, snow piles, and garland) during my trading, although I would like to get at least one rare icy patch as well, and possibly even a white card, but that is not as "important" to me at this time. I am not trying to complete the holiday card collection though, but I usually hang on to the cards I receive until I need storage space, in case somebody else on my shard is trying to complete the set (and then I would give them the cards for free). So while trading as you suggested would get me the rare items, it wouldn't give me much else, and since I am trying to save some of my own tickets mainly for the character names, I would find it difficult to get even the basic items without trading in the "traditional" method.
So, yes, there are many people here who feel it is important to trade all gifts, as what one person might find "important" is not what everyone might find "important". Please don't read this as me putting down your beliefs though, as to each their own, and I was commenting more on the practice of people offering the items for sale or trade for like items only, rather than the trading that has traditionally been done; heck, I really wish the posts of items for sale were moved/removed from this forum, as it seems to be completely against the spirit of trading, but I don't recall this forum's ToS to know what it actually says about it.
Anyway, my 2 gp worth. Carrion (yeah, I know it's carry on, but I like the animal carcass reference much better!!!).
