Secretly Santa

By agreement, our extended family Christmas festivities are hosted turn-and-turn-about at various family members’ homes. The host(ess) for the year generally decides on the lunch menu, orders the ham/turkey/other, and decides on a few other items to produce in-house. Then she recruits various family members assist with the rest of the catering in some way. Usually this involves someone being asked to bring some nibbles, a couple of people to bring salads, and one or two to get creative with desserts.

Everyone shares the load in some way and fine time is had by one and all. The day itself is usually full of noise and laughter, fun and frivolity. By the time we’ve enjoyed some snacks and a celebratory drink, had a swim and then worked our way through a long, lazy lunch, we’re all pretty much ready for a nap.

But wait… there’s still dessert to be conquered!

To give everyone some time to recover enough to enjoy the tasty treats on offer, this is when we usually get one or more of the youngsters to act as Santa and distribute the gifts. It tends to bump us all out of our food hangovers and generate some renewed interest – which we can then usually all sustain through dessert, coffee and eventual departure home to collapse in comfort.

Several years ago Boychilde came to me with an idea. He said he’d noticed that everyone was spending an awful lot of time and money running around buying gifts each year and that, as often as not, the gifts turned out to be things that the recipients didn’t really want – or already had. He wasn’t sure it was such a great plan and wondered what my thoughts were on introducing something different.

Although I genuinely appreciate the thought that goes into every gift I get, I definitely agreed and was on-side for a change of pace. The question then was how to change the system in such a way as to retain the happy Christmassey feel whilst simultaneously limiting expenditure, gift awkwardness and the headless-chook runaround of last minute gift gathering.

The idea of introducing something along the lines of a Secret Santa or Kris Kringel, where everyone in the extended family only bought – and received – one gift sounded like a plausible solution. The next step was to unleash the idea on the rest of the family. We thrashed out  a few more details and, rather to my surprise, the siblings, nieces and nephews all jumped on board with alacrity. I guess the timing was right for everyone.

As a group, we decided on the budget for the Secret Santa gifts, then agreed that it would be an even better idea we each come up with a list of three items to that set dollar value for their Santa to choose from. This way everyone’d get something they wanted… but they wouldn’t know exactly what until they opened their gift just before dessert-time. Perfect!

We got together for a pre-Christmas afternoon tea about a month before d-day, consumed fruit mince pies and each drew one of the lists out of a hat. Then it was up to each of us as to what we chose from that list. We’d each bring our wrapped mystery Santa-gift (for a specific individual) along on Christmas day, pop it under the tree anonymously, and wait for the before-dessert grand reveal.

And so a new family tradition was well and truly born. This year is our 10th Secret Santa family gathering (time flies!) and I’ve had fun with my Xmas shopping – which is still a refreshing change after years of dreading it! This year my niece and her daughters, with help from my sister and her family, is hosting the event – and it’s going to be fabulous.

Bring it on, Secret Santas 🙂