Has anyone else noticed that their is hardly any gifts happening. I won’t be on all day and I open the gift bag and nothing much there than a few 10 coins and medallions

That really isn't unusual. When we first start the Winter Event we have lots of gifts to give and so we're generous and try to gift everyone. But after a couple of weeks we have either run out or our supply is very low. So we can't gift as many people. I started out with about 340 gifts and I have a little over 100 friends. The first couple of days I gifted everyone who had a WE room open. But since then I've only been gifting 20 people each day. Each day I write down the last person gifted and then the next day start from there. So my friends are receiving a gift from me only every 5 days or so. I know I could gift more friends each day, but then I would run out and not be able to gift anyone. I'm replenishing my gifts by trading with the kids, but that's not enough to be able to gift everyone every day. 

I too am running low on gifts even with trading with the children each day. So I decided to gift only those who had X-mas room 4 open.

Not ideal, I would really like to gift all who has an event room open, but this at least is manageable when the gifts are scarce.

And I tell myself that it is not my decision if someone doesn't have room 4 open, lol

I too am running low so I gift to the friends that always gift to me. I figure the others are only there for the event.

Unfortunately, I am very hesitant to gift due to the game being unstable right now. So many posts about people losing everything that I hold my breath every time I see 'Please Wait' come up . . . I'm lucky if I can get through 10-12 rooms before the lag is so bad then the game freezes up and I have to restart. 

its actually been like that from the beginning

I had under 200 gifts and I have 126 friends so I've been doing a combination of all the players here have described.  But I'm not sure where we got the gifts.  I know some came from doing HOSes in the game and that I can trade with the kids for them, but is there any other way?

I'm down to about 65 and I feel bad every time I do the HOS in someone's private room and leave without leaving a gift.  

Mara1022 said:

I know some came from doing HOSes in the game and that I can trade with the kids for them, but is there any other way?

They just drop randomly from the HOs. But you collect them all year, so during the year they slowly accumulate depending on how much you play.

someone who recently started playing, or have had a long break, will not have many gifts to start the Winter Event with.

Hirento said:

so during the year they slowly accumulate depending on how much you play.

That is so true. One thing I've noticed when I play is that if I just go in and do the Daily Quest and follow the storyline, then I don't hardly ever get one. But if I go in and play the rounds of HOS then they start dropping.

I thought maybe there was a limit on how many gifts you could receive each day.  I've given out over 350 on a PC game and am working at over a thousand on an IPad and rarely receive more than one a day back. The whole thing seems pointless since the snowflakes received for giving are only worth 10 points.