Secret Santa: The Definitive Guide
Everything you wanted to know about the Christmas gift exchange
Playing Secret Santa this year? Try our free Secret Santa Generator!
In This Post:
What is Secret Santa?
Secret Santa is a Christmas gift exchange tradition played around the world. The premise is quite simple: a group of friends, family, co-workers (or any combination) decides to all swap gifts anonymously. Each person draws a name, and buys a single gift for that recipient, acting as that person’s “Secret Santa”. The organizer will often plan a “gift exchange party” when everyone brings their gifts and has a fun time opening the gifts and guessing who their Secret Santas are.
Secret Santa History & Popularity
As with many games, there is some mystery to the origins of Secret Santa Gift Exchanges. Here are a couple of the popular theories:
In Scandinavian countries, a tradition similar to Secret Santa was known in the 1700s as “Julklapp” - roughly translated to “Knocking Christmas.” The tradition called for knocking on a neighbor’s door, opening it and leaving a gift inside without being seen. (Sounds a bit similar to a modern-day tradition among juveniles called “Dig Dong Ditch” where you ring the doorbell and then run away before anyone sees you. Of course… that one doesn’t include a gift!) Another fun quirk of this custom was to also leave a note with the gift that contained a funny message - but not the recipients name. The household would divine which gift was for who based on the witty notes. This certainly seems like the roots for modern-day Secret Santa, but the exact connection to the more organized group gift-giving isn’t known.
In the United States, many point to philanthropist Larry Dean Stewart as the so-called ‘original Secret Santa.’ Stewart gave anonymous gifts to the needy at Christmastime for decades, starting in 1979 in Kansas City. For what motivated this giving, this account says that Stewart himself was once homeless, and a random act of kindness from a stranger in his time of need inspired him to do the same if he was ever able. It turned out he made a small fortune in cable, and started a tradition of handing out $100 bills to people in need on the street. After the 9/11 attacks in New York City, Stewart traveled to NYC and donated almost $25,000 to locals. In this way, while he wasn’t a pioneer of the secret santa gift exchange, he is certainly the godfather of the spirit of anonymous giving during the holidays.
Regardless of how it started, it is one of the most cherished Christmas pastimes - and certainly one of the most popular gift swap games - in the world. New Zealand even does a ‘national’ Secret Santa via Twitter! Thousands of people join in the fun each year, and even the prime minister joined the fun in recent years. The largest Secret Santa ever held was organized on Reddit with nearly 90,000 people participating! Apparently it’s an open secret that Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates has participated in the Reddit Secret Santa (fingers crossed! Though he’d probably just get you a book…)
Secret Santa Rules
Here are the rules to Secret Santa:
Pick a group of people to play with. This can be an even or odd number, as few as 3 and as many as you want (the Guinness Record is almost 90,000 people in one exchange!) The key is that the group can’t change once names have been drawn, or they’ll have to be redrawn.
Draw Names: who is your recipient? This can be done any way you’d like: names in a hat, an online secret santa generator, etc. The key points are: 1) Everyone gets a name; 2) Nobody gets themselves, and; 3) It stays anonymous!
Set a price limit. You want everyone to be in the same ballpark in their gift giving, so this is an important guideline to give and follow.
Set a deadline. It’s important everyone get their gift on-time. This is typically in the form of a Christmas party where everyone brings their gift, or ships them to the recipient ahead of time if it’s a virtual holiday party
Everyone purchases a gift for their recipient. Participants can do this on their own time and schedule, as long as it’s before the deadline.
Exchange gifts (and guess who your Secret Santa is!). Typically this is done together with the whole group, so everyone can see the gifts and join in the fun of guessing who the Secret Kris Kringle is.
Optional Variations & Additions:
Have participants provide wishlists or fill out questionnaires to offer guidance to the Santas.
Have participants leave small clues about their identity to their recipient ahead of “gift opening day”.
Set a theme for the gift exchange (for example: only books if you’re doing it with a book club).
On the day of the exchange, have everyone write down their guesses for who bought which gift. The person with the most right answers wins a prize!
Why Play Secret Santa?
Here are a few great reasons to organize a Secret Santa Gift Exchange this year:
Less expensive. If you’re thinking about your family or a group of friends, everyone getting everyone a gift means a lot of gift-giving, which also means a lot of moola. If you want to save some money this year, a Secret Santa gift swap is a good way to have everyone get a thoughtful gift in a more economical way. Especially as families get older, this can be a good tradition to start!
Less pressure (maybe). While you save money, it can also mean you save the hassle of having to purchase gifts for a bunch of people. You can just focus on buying the one perfect gift for your gift recipient. In this way, there can be less pressure by doing Secret Santa. That being said, if you’re talking about doing one with a group you don’t know super well, it can actually be more stressful because you’re on the spot for getting the ‘perfect’ gift for someone. For groups like that, we actually recommend doing a White Elephant Gift Exchange, which are a ton of fun, and don’t require you to pick a gift for a specific person.
Fun way to celebrate the holidays. Overall, it’s just a fun activity. You have the anticipation of which name you’ll draw, the hunt for the perfect gift, and the culmination of a holiday party where everyone gets to reveal themselves and revel in their gifts.
How to plan a Secret Santa Gift Exchange
The premise of the Secret Santa Gift Swap is straightforward, but there are a few things to consider when organizing your next exchange. Here are 9 tips for planning your gift swap:
Decide who’s participating. It sounds simple, but confirming who will be joining the exchange is an important step before you draw names! If someone wants to join last minute, or drops out, it’ll throw off the whole group leaving others without a gift or a recipient to buy for.
Set a price limit. It’s always helpful to set a maximum price limit or a price range for the Santas. You don’t want to run into circumstances where one person spends lavishly while others go for a simple home-made item. Any gift can feel special, but you want everyone to be on the same page about the types of gifts that are expected. Which brings us to our next tip…
Set a theme (optional). The main theme of Secret Santa is typically: a gift your recipient will love. The goal, where possible, is to get to know your recipient and get them something they’ll enjoy. That being said, if you want to have fun with it you can always set a theme for your exchange, such as “retro items” for your group of 90s kids, or “homemade items” if you’re a particularly crafty bunch. Alternatively, you may want to callout excluded items that the Secret Santas should avoid. For example, avoiding alcohol if people within a group don’t drink.
Plan your Gift Exchange Party. OK, technically you don’t need to throw a party to exchange the gifts, but that’s half the fun! If your group lives near each other, you can plan a Christmas party and have the Secret Santa Gift Exchange be a fun activity after some Christmas cookies and eggnog. Everyone will bring their gifts to the party, and leave with the one they receive!
If your group is spread across the country, you can also plan a virtual Secret Santa: simply organize a Zoom call to open gifts together. When planning a remote Secret Santa, it’s super important to make sure everyone ships their gift ahead of time, so recipients have them to open. Finally, if you can’t get your group in-person or on a call at the same time, you can always tell people to open their gifts on their own time, and text the group chat with their guesses.
Assign Secret Santas / draw names. This is where Secret Santa Generators come in handy. Yes, you can certainly do it old-school and put all the names in a hat and have each person draw the name of their recipient. But if you can’t gather in person to draw names there are many tools out there that allow you to manage it online.
Provide a wishlist or Secret Santa questionnaire. If you use a tool like Secret Santa Generator, everyone can easily provide notes and a wishlist to guide their Santa to the right purchase. Otherwise, you can have each person answer some questions about their lifestyle and preferences to help guide the purchase. (See below for more tips on that!)
Purchase your gift. Don’t forget this one! One thing to keep in mind is deadlines: if you’re shipping your gift to your recipient (or just ordering online for a local party), make sure you’re taking into account shipping times. Especially around the holidays, shipping delays can occur, and you don’t want to be the only Secret Santa that fell off the sled this year!
Exchange gifts! Now the fun time: exchanging gifts. The most fun way to do it is one-at-a-time. Have each person open their gift, and everyone can ooo and ahh, and guess who the giver was!
Guess who your Secret Santa was. Half the fun is guessing who may be the Secret Santa behind a gift. If you want to make this into even more of an activity, distribute a sheet ahead of time with a list of everyone and a line for guests to fill in who they think purchased the gift. The person with the most right answers wins a prize!
Bonus Tip: Before you decide to play Secret Santa at all, consider your group. If it’s family members or friends that know each other well, Secret Santa can be a good activity. However, for groups that aren’t as close, a White Elephant gift exchange can be a better option to take the pressure off of participants to pick a ‘perfect gift’ for someone they don’t know.
Secret Santa Generators
Many websites provide tools to manage your secret santa gift swap. Here are a few key features to look for when searching for the perfect secret santa generator:
Must allow you to draw names
Provide a wishlist feature, to help the Santas know what to get
Be mobile-accessible. You don’t need a mobile app (in fact, who wants to download more apps?) but it has to be mobile-friendly.
Be easy & fun to use
Be Free
If you’re organizing a Secret Santa this year, try out our Secret Santa Generator. It checks all the boxes: a fun, free and easy-to-use tool for Christmas this year.
Secret Santa Gift Ideas
There is no one ‘right’ answer to what the best Secret Santa Gift is. Sometimes people will opt for more silly gifts. For that, check out our White Elephant Gift Guides which contain gift ideas for all sorts of topics, many of which will work great for Secret Santa.
The main thing to consider is who your recipient is. Do they prefer practical items or novelty? What activities do they enjoy? Have they mentioned any needs they have recently? Do they like decor for their house? Do they read? There are infinite possibilities. To help narrow your search, if you’re using an online Secret Santa Generator then everyone can include notes and a wishlist to guide your search. If not, then your group can all fill out a Secret Santa Questionnaire, which conveniently is our next topic below!
Secret Santa Questions - 25 Examples
If you’re organizing a Secret Santa, you may be wondering: how do I ensure everyone can come up with good gift ideas?
Well if you’re using our Secret Santa Generator, you’re in luck: the platform allows everyone to create a wishlist of gifts sourced from any website of their choosing. They can also add a general note about the types of things they enjoy. But maybe you’re old-school and want to draw names out of a hat. Or maybe you love the wishlist, but still want to give your participants some prompts to help uncover the perfect gift idea.
That’s where the Secret Santa Questionnaire comes in: it’s a list of questions that all of your participants fill out to give the Santas guidance on what types of items or experiences the person would enjoy receiving as a gift. The easiest way to do this in person is to have everyone fill it out, and when names are drawn the questionnaire is pulled with it. Virtually, everyone could fill out a google doc and place into a folder, where everyone can view/download the ones that are relevant to them.
Here are 25 great Secret Santa Questions - pick your favorite!
What kind of books do you like to read?
What's your favorite type of movie?
Do you have any pets? If so what?
If you're ordering food on Friday night, where is it from?
What's your favorite time of the year and why?
What's your favorite way to spend time outside?
Do you prefer video games, TV or movies?
Favorite color?
Sweet or savory?
Do you prefer to travel or stay home?
Do you prefer funny or practical gifts?
Do you like homemade gifts?
Do you like "techie" items?
What's your favorite genre of music?
Do you have a green thumb?
What's your favorite content to consume, and from where?
Do you have any goals you'd like help working towards?
What's missing around your home?
Do you consider yourself an organized or messy person?
What’s your favorite restaurant?
Do you have kids (if so: # and ages)?
What was your least favorite gift you received and why?
What was your favorite gift you received and why?
What are your favorite hobbies?
If you won the lottery tomorrow, what would you do with your time?
Interested in playing Secret Santa this Year?
Make planning it a breeze with our free, fun and easy Secret Santa Generator
