I think they preferred getting a gift, yeah. Writing about what you like (and filing off the serials here and there to reuse that info) for maybe a weekend and then keeping an eye on when your gifts are posted/a defaulting schedule sounds like way less work that the 5 digit cumulative wordcount I pull off every Yuletide. It’s more work to me because I like writing and getting a gift equally, but people sign up to PH (doesn’t misura not sign up at all?) and write 30k without getting anything and have a great time. This is the opposite of that but the exact same mindset: putting in effort for what you think is fun and engaging in a way where you don’t have to do anything that isn’t fun, in their case writing to someone else’s prompts or at all.
Re: Yuletide history