Sustainable Christmas - Secret Santa
You might be thinking, how does doing a secret santa make Christmas sustainable? In terms of making Christmas more earth conscious, participating in a family (or friend/group) secret santa is a fantastic way to buy what someone needs or would like, reduces wasteful gifts, uses less wrapping (in some cases, depending on the size of the gifts!) and less buying gifts just for the sake of buying gifts. This December will be our 3rd year of doing a family secret santa, I can’t wait!
Let’s break it down into a useful guide:
How does it work?
Assuming everyone knows the rules of secret santa (but just incase you don’t), you pick a name at random and buy for that person, without anyone at the end knowing who you had to buy for, or who bought the gift you received. I have a large family, so in my situation we decided to include my parents, sisters and brother-in-laws, and not include the children in the family (for obvious reasons) meaning we have 11 of us in total. I guess the smaller the group, the easier it may be to figure out who had who, but really it isn’t the end of the world and it’s fun either way.
Budget and make a list for Santa!
First think about setting a budget - ideally you want it to be as fair as possible, and also make sure everyone can afford it. As an example our budget is a maximum spend guideline of £40-£50 no minimum, but you can make this whatever you like/can all agree on. If we were to buy each person (outside of a secret santa) a gift then we would be spending much more, therefore this saves us all money.
List for Santa! To ensure we can all see what each other might like, without asking, we have a shared Google doc with each persons name. It’s shared for everyone to be able to open it and make their wishlists. Either write a list or write ‘surprise me’ if you would prefer a surprise.
Who Draws the names?
For ours we have a designated individual outside the secret santa group. This person (our cousin) is the person who has the names, puts them in a hat and draws them out. She then sends us all an individual text message with the name of who we have for our secret santa. (I might need to add in at this stage, my oldest sister and brother-in-law live in the UK so this is another reason why this is easiest way for us). You could just put all the names in a hat and pick at random, or I think there are even some websites that you can do this on.
What about the presents being sent via post?
Family members in the UK send their gifts to our cousins house, she then takes them out and puts them into the bag (in the next step), to avoid it being obvious which ones came from the UK.
Where does everyone put/give the presents?
At my parents house we have a BIG bag, and next to it a list of names. Put your gift into the bag (strictly no looking inside), then cross out the name of the person your gift is for. This ensures that (in case of error) only one person can put a gift in for each person. If there was an issue then at this point we would find out!
What are the Benefits of secret santa?
Most of all it’s a lot of fun, and saves money. If you’re someone who is looking to receive plastic free gifts then this is a great way to be more specific and ask for what you’d like, knowing that whoever has you is likely to be considerate of what gifts to buy.
Surely everyone knows who had who?
Surprisingly not (well I don’t anyway) I had my suspicions the first time around, but honesty don’t know who had me last year. Though… due to a little situation I did know who two people had, but now I think about it I can’t even remember what I found out. We also all agree to use brown paper as the wrapping (it’s plastic free) and also keeps the secret going!
We also have a family group Whatsapp to say thanks for the gifts, share the link to the wishlist and and updates on the practicalities of it (e.g. chasing everyone to make sure they have put their gifts in the bag etc)
Are you feeling inspired? Is this something you’d consider doing, or do you do this with your family already?