Being a good Santa
The key to being a good Secret Santa is threefold:
- do some research
- stick to the agreed budget
- being genuine and thoughtful
If you have drawn someone you know, think back over conversations or instances from the recent past and tie the gift in with something you know about your recipient. For instance, for my work Secret Santa, I remembered a very small comment she had made a month or so before where she critiqued a donut. Such a small thing, but it meant I remembered that she had high standards for donuts. With that in mind, I made her a book to record her donut critiques as well as a list of places to visit and find Auckland’s best donuts.
In the case of online Secret Santa projects, it’s very unlikely that you will know your recipient, so a bit of Googling and Face-stalking will be in order. If your Secret Santa has locked accounts, as mine did this year, then you’ll need to try a little harder.
After looking at my recipients Twitter profile picture and her follower count (both visible even on protected accounts), I figured she was either very new to Twitter and still in High School. I bought her a book about being an explorer in her every-day world, a card, and some chocolate. I thought the book would be something she could do in her school holidays and maybe give her stuff to tweet about. Also included a list of age-appropriate Twitter accounts she could follow to grow her confidence on the network.
Being a bad Santa
This is to be avoided at all costs because people remember dud Secret Santa experiences their entire lives; plus, you will feel bad well past the Christmas period. There are really only a couple of ways you can be a Bad Santa, but the legend of that fateful mistake will live on much longer:
- If you miss the deadline to getting your Secret Santa in the post, or under the tree, your recipient is going to miss out on a present and then both of you will feel bad.
- If you do not put enough thought into the present. If you just grab a bar of LUX soap (my Secret Santa present from a work colleague in 1980; oh yes, I do still remember) or spend well below the agreed budget (a $5 gift card when the limit was $15; a story from last year’s NZ Secret Santa) then you are a Bad Santa and you should never have signed up to play.
If you can't meet the budget or the deadlines: don't play.
In saying that, you do need to be prepared for the possibility that you end up being a Bad Santa. For instance, maybe you did put a lot of effort into researching your recipient’s likes and life; maybe you worked very hard to match the budget and get the gift into the post in time. You might still end up being the accidental Bad Santa when you see how bang-on the gift was that you received and maybe yours was off the mark.
I experienced that this year when I saw how well my Blog Secret Santa crafted guest posts for thejamjar.com. I had worked hard on my guest posts as a Blog Secret Santa but had not been as selfless with the articles I had sent to my recipients. I can attest that it's a horrible feeling to have not done as thoughtful as I could have and one which I intend to not repeat next year.