Want to liven up your gift-giving this year? Organize a Secret Santa gift exchange! You can participate in this popular holiday tradition with your friends, coworkers, or family. Everyone will appreciate the chance to give a truly memorable gift and go home with something special of their own.
The great part about a Secret Santa exchange is that the gift-giving is as much fun as the receiving. You may even get to know your gift recipient a little better as you brainstorm fun gifts to give them. If the idea of giving gifts to everyone you know feels too overwhelming or isn’t in your budget, creating a Secret Santa exchange is a great idea. It can alleviate some of the challenges of holiday shopping while ensuring that everyone gets a present selected with them in mind.
Keep reading and get all your Secret Santa questions answered so you can get busy organizing one!
What You Need to Organize a Secret Santa Gift Exchange
You can organize a Secret Santa gift exchange with a few easy steps. There aren’t many rules aside from making sure that the secret part stays in place. Let everyone know that they shouldn’t talk about who they’re giving their gift to. You don’t want to ruin the surprise!
Invite people to participate
Decide who you want to invite, whether that’s a group of friends, your coworkers, family members, etc. The event can be in person, or you can arrange to have the gifts sent.
Select your Secret Santa budget
Make sure you cap gifts at a certain price so everyone receives presents of comparable value. This makes gift-giving affordable for all involved. You can choose a cap, such as $25 or $50, depending on what people can afford and how much they’d like to spend. You may want to set a lower price for coworkers and a higher one if you’re organizing a Secret Santa with family.
Draw names
Once you have the participants confirmed, select names to match pairs of gift givers and receivers. You can either do this yourself by writing each name on a piece of paper, tossing them together, and selecting them yourself, or use an online Secret Santa generator such as Elfster.
Decide on a deadline
Make a deadline for the exchange that gives everyone enough time to purchase their gifts. Make sure everyone is available on the selected date and send a calendar invitation so they won’t forget.
Have everyone create wish lists
This step is optional, but for people who may not know their recipient too well, it can be very helpful. Have recipients create wish lists sharing a little bit of information about themselves, such as their pop culture faves, hobbies, and preferred colors. This will help gift-givers narrow down their choices. Let people know that they can use the wish lists as a guide, but they can also use their intuition to give a gift that the person never would have thought of. If you’re doing a family Secret Santa, everyone may already know each other’s personalities well enough to not need wish lists.
Organize the Secret Santa event
If you’re doing an in-person Secret Santa gift exchange, decide when and where it will be held and what refreshments you’ll serve. If you’re doing it at the office, you might want to schedule it for the end of the day so everyone can simply relax and enjoy the fun. You can put on festive music, decorate, and serve food and drinks to create a truly merry mood. If you’re doing a virtual party, you can have everyone coordinate their refreshments.
Open your Secret Santa gifts!
For an in-person exchange, you can place all the gifts in one spot, with the recipients’ names prominently on the packages. Once they open their gift, each person can guess who gave it to them. You can even give out a small prize, such as candy or a funny gag gift, if someone gets it right on the first guess! For a virtual Secret Santa, you can also have them guess. The most important thing to remember is to have fun and laugh!
We hope this Secret Santa 101 inspires you this holiday season! Now that you know how to organize things, it’s time to go shopping. Check out Spencer’s online store for all your holiday gift ideas, and read The Inspo Spot for gift-giving tips and suggestions!
