Secret Santa: The Ultimate Stress-Free Guide

 

Running a successful Secret Santa for clubs or associations should add joy, not stress, to the holidays. This ultimate Secret Santa guide provides event organisers with a stress-free, step-by-step approach, covering everything from setting a fair gifts budget to using online tools like Draw Names for assigning recipients. By organising a fun, well-defined exchange, your organisation can boost member engagement and host a memorable club holiday party.

As much as Christmas is a time of loved ones, great weather, going to the beach, playing cricket, and Paul Kelly’s How To Make Gravy, it can also be stressful and exhausting. For me, Christmas time is synonymous with spending hours in traffic on the highway between Newcastle and Sydney, hoping the aircon doesn't fail in 38-degree heat.

 

 

This is exactly what I picture when someone says Christmas time. 

Christmas can be a mixed bag, so when you get an opportunity to add some extra joy to the season and remove some of the stress, it’s important to do so. So, today, let’s talk about how you can run a great Secret Santa at your club or association with no added stress.

Quick explainer, for the non-Australians who are confused by my description of Christmas. Here we go: 

• In Australia, it is summer in December, and the temperature is usually fairly warm, with temperatures over 100°F on Christmas Day not uncommon; hence, it’s pretty common for people to go to the beach at Christmas time.  
• Cricket is one of those sports that the English invented and now get beaten at by everybody else. It’s kind of like baseball.
• How To Make Gravy is a song by Paul Kelly. It is kind of about making gravy for Christmas lunch, and also it is kind of about a man in prison over Christmas worrying that his brother will sleep with his wife. It might sound weird, but it’s an institution here.  
• Sydney and Newcastle are the two biggest cities in the state I live in. Sydney’s like San Francisco, and Newcastle is basically Portland, Oregon. 

What Is Secret Santa?

Secret Santa is a gift-giving game that happens in the month or two leading up to Christmas, often among friends or coworkers. Some people even use it to organise gifts within their families.

In the game, everyone draws a name to see who they’re buying a gift for. The twist is that nobody knows who their Secret Santa is until the gifts are exchanged, which makes it exciting. Part of the fun is guessing who the person was who bought your gift. Usually, there’s a budget set to keep things fair and affordable, so everyone ends up with gifts of similar quality. The gifts can be sweet, funny, totally random, or whatever your group is into. Overall, it’s a simple and enjoyable way to celebrate the holidays. 

Why You Should Run A Secret Santa

Secret Santa is a great way to inject some lighthearted fun and whimsy into your holiday season and give your members or committee something to bond over. We do a Secret Santa at Member Jungle. We hold ours just after the final company meeting of the year. It's not really about the gifts; it's about everyone sharing a laugh and just having a nice time before Christmas.

Secret Santa can be a fun way to celebrate everyone's hard work throughout the year. Plus, it gives everyone a nice break during what can be a pretty stressful time. It's a nice, fun way to thank everyone for their work and catch up before the holidays roll in and the new year arrives. It is in my mind, at least, like one of those fun days you'd get right before the end of the year at school. Where your teachers would bring in pizza and you'd watch some old movie on VHS; it's just a nice way to wind down after what was inevitably a long year.  

It gives members a fun reason to mingle, provides great photo opportunities for social media, and generally is just a good excuse to relax a little. 

Step 1: Work Out Who Is & Participating 

If you're running a Secret Santa for your committee members, it’s best to send out an email in mid to late November. In the email, inform all committee members that you are organising a Secret Santa and ask them to confirm their willingness to participate. Creating a Secret Santa event in your Member Jungle system and inviting your committee members that way is a really simple and easy way to organise it. 

Make sure to include the following information in your communication:

• The date of the gift exchange
• The budget for gifts (a typical range is $20 to $50)
• A reminder that no one should exceed the budget
• Guidance on the tone of the gifts, such as whether they should be serious, sweet, funny, etc.
• Clarification on whether gifts should be mailed to recipients or given in person

 

Once everyone responds to your email or RSVPs to your event, you'll know who is participating, and you’ll be right to move on to step two.

 

Step 2: Drawing Names For Everyone

Next, you need to assign everyone someone to secretly buy presents for. The classic way this works is to have everyone pull names from a hat. Once the names are drawn, remind everyone to spend as close to the agreed-upon budget as possible. It can be awkward if someone gets a gift that is clearly too cheap or too expensive, so be firm about the spending limit.

You can use an online service like Draw Names to run your Secret Santa gift exchange. This platform allows you to assign each person their Secret Santa and even links to Amazon, so participants can create wishlists of items they'd like. This way, their Secret Santa can easily view and purchase gifts for them. While it may not be for everyone, I've used it a few times, and in my opinion, it significantly simplifies the entire process.

 

You can find out more about how Draw Names works at How To Draw Names. 

Step 3. Host Your Secret Santa

Finally, all you need to do is actually host your Secret Santa event. A well-planned exchange should just be casual pleasant fun, but a poorly managed one can lead to confusion and an awkward atmosphere.

Here are a few quick tips for making the exchange itself run smoothly:

• Make it an Event, Not an Obligation: Integrate the Secret Santa exchange into your annual holiday party or a casual end-of-year meeting. This ensures a festive atmosphere and guarantees attendance.
• Keep the Master List Handy: Even if you used an online generator, you should always have a master list of who bought for whom. This is your emergency safety net to prevent the awkward situation where someone ends up with no gift, or gives a gift to someone they didn't draw.
• The Unveiling: Decide beforehand if you want the recipient to try to guess who their Secret Santa was after opening the gift, or if it will stay anonymous. Make this rule clear at the start of the exchange to avoid any awkward confusions.

By making the process clear and fun, you ensure that the Secret Santa adds joy to your organisation's Christmas, not stress.

Variations Of Secret Santa 

The traditional Secret Santa is where everyone buys a particular person a secret gift. Then, upon opening it, each person has to try and guess who bought them said gift. There usually isn’t more on the line than bragging rights, but honestly, bragging rights might be the best gift of all. 

Secret Santa can be played in countless ways, including Stealing Secret Santa or the Yankee Swap. In this version, participants purchase a random gift for no specific person. During the game, players can either unwrap a present that has yet to be opened or steal an already opened one from someone else; if you are looking for more ways to shake up how you run Secret Santa, why not check out this article from Secret Santa.com, 10 Fun Ways to Play Secret Santa. 

Go Enjoy Christmas With Your Committee & Members

That’s about all you need to start planning your club’s Secret Santa and make it both super easy and lots of fun. If you decide to run a Secret Santa, we at Member Jungle hope it goes well, and everyone has an awesome time.