The long-running show “Friends” puts into perspective why Secret Santas can be a fun and festive way to celebrate the holidays: “This year maybe we could do Secret Santa, and then we each only buy one gift. And there’s the added mystery of who gets who!”
Secret Santas can be an easy and fairly cost-effective way of celebrating with friends, especially on a college student’s budget. Most students have to worry about buying gifts not only for friends, but for numerous family members as well. Let alone the dent this can leave on a wallet, there can also be the added pressure to find that “perfect” gift. Who needs that when there’s already stress surrounding the end of the semester and finals?
Never fear! Not only do Secret Santas make it a lot easier on the cost of gift buying, but it can also be exciting waiting to figure out whom your secret Santa is. As an added plus, Secret Santa events is not much of a hassle to set up either.
First, decide on a way to pick out who gets who, without any repeats. There are a couple routes to take in order to figure this out. The traditional way of picking hand-written names out of some sort of a container works or an online generator could work just as well. One website that does the random name generation and picking out is Elfster; just enter in the names of participants and the draw is taken care of!
Next, something that goes along with making it cost-effective, is setting the spending limit and hoping that everyone stays within that limit. How everyone’s budget is and how much people are willing to spend can be the deciding factor on how much of a limit to set.
Another helpful setting on Elfster is the ability to set wish lists and ask anonymous questions to try to get an idea of what your draw’s “perfect” gift is.
Once the gifts are bought and wrapped, the fun part begins: the exchange. Find a place to meet that works for everyone, like a restaurant or the mall, and have fun giving out the presents. The Secret Santa event will be a fun way to kick off your holiday celebrations!
