Secret Santa is a Christmas tradition enjoyed by many throughout the years as a way to anonymously, or not, to give gifts to their friends and family. It has origins all the way back to 1700s Scandinavia, but was brought into the American mainstream in the 1970s when philanthropist Larry Stewart anonymously gave people money throughout his life.
I have done Secret Santa activities for years now, and I can confirm that it is a really fun part of a Christmas party. From gathering intel on what my person likes to guessing who one’s Secret Santa is after finally opening the present, every aspect of this tradition is very enjoyable.
The aspect of Secret Santa that I enjoy the most is seeing the reaction of the person I was Secret Santa for open their gift. I tend to not pull any punches with my gifts, and one person even has my gifts from two different years as his top two best gifts he has gotten for Secret Santa.
Of course, I absolutely have to mention how good the gift getting is. Most of the time, I usually just get a collection of white chocolate and caramel candies as I unintentionally give very little information to the person who has me, but I still enjoy those quite a bit. The best gift I have been given in a Secret Santa activity is a plushie of Jax from “The Amazing Digital Circus.”
Secret Santa does not even have to be confined to the Christmas season, which makes it even better. Of course, a new name will have to be adopted if it is done outside of Christmas, but that is super easy to come up with. One of my favorite examples of a non-Christmas Secret Santa activity is Best Buddies, which occurs in the Mt. Vernon Theatre program. In this activity, multiple gifts are given in the week leading up to opening night, which makes the deduction game all the much more fun.
All things considered, this is the perfect Christmas time activity, scoring sixteen out of sixteen Christmases I have been alive for, and it wins my continued participation in any Secret Santa activity that comes my way.