Secret Santa: how to run it so nobody agonises over the gift

Decide this before the draw

Half the awkwardness in Secret Santa comes not from the gifts but from things nobody agreed on. Four questions worth settling in the very first message.

• The amount. Not “around fifty” but a range, from and to. Otherwise one person brings a keyring and another brings headphones, and both feel bad.
• The exchange date. Everything else counts backwards from it, and it doubles as the buying deadline.
• Who's in. The list is frozen before the draw: one person added afterwards breaks the chain.
• What counts as cheating. Usually two rules: don't reveal yourself before the exchange, and don't give an outright joke gift.

Running the draw itself

How you do it depends on whether you're all in one room.

1. 1Everyone in the same room. The classic: names on paper in a hat. One rule — whoever draws themselves puts it back and draws again, otherwise the chain breaks.
2. 2People in different cities. You can run the draw right here: the organiser sets it up, drops one link into the group chat, and everyone adds their name and attaches a wishlist. After that each person sees only who they're buying for — nobody sees the whole chain, the organiser included.
3. 3Collect wishlists first. The step people skip, and it matters more than the draw: before it happens, everyone puts together a list of things they'd actually use and drops the link into the group chat.
4. 4Hand out results privately. Direct messages, not the group chat. Obvious, and yet every other year somebody pastes the results where everyone can see them.

The real problem: buying for someone you don't know

Now the actual difficulty. You've drawn a person, you can't ask them anything without giving yourself away, and you're left choosing between a candle, a mug and a gift card.

This is exactly what a wishlist is for. Everyone puts one together in advance — not “what to buy me” but simply things they'd use over the next six months — and drops the link into the group chat before the draw. Then their Santa opens it and picks in silence.

• Guests need no account: they open the link and see the list.
• A spread of prices matters more here than on a normal list: your Santa has a cap and shouldn't have to guess what fits under it.
• A wish with a price and a shop link does half the giver's work for them.
• Reservations remove the main fear: two people won't buy the same thing, even if somebody besides your Santa is also buying you a present.

What usually goes wrong

Three failures that repeat every year, and all three are cured in advance.

• Somebody drops out at the last minute. The cure isn't reshuffling the whole chain but a spare giver — usually the organiser, who takes a second person.
• A joke instead of a gift. Agree upfront: a joke is fine as long as it comes with something real.
• Someone never wrote a list and gets a random present. That's why lists are collected BEFORE the draw — asking afterwards is already awkward.