With the holidays slowly creeping faster towards us, as well as the dreaded finals, some clubs and organizations here at THS and in the community have decided to do ‘Secret Santa’ gift exchanges to lighten the mood.

For some of you that may not know what a Secret Santa gift exchange is, it is the anonymous trade between groups of people. Often the names of people are put in a hat and drawn out by people individually, with the name kept a secret to the rest of the group.

Sometimes the gift will be a serious gift that the receiver will either use or enjoy, but most of the time Secret Santa is synonymous with a white elephant party. So most of the time people give gifts that’re totally random or useless but entertaining to receive.

Generally the cost per gift is around $5 to $20, which shouldn’t seem like too much of a task, find a cheap gift and get out of there as fast as possible. But finding a good or clever gift is hard.

First you must learn about who you are gifting the item to. What is their favorite color? What is their favorite song? Do they like movies or books? What are their hobbies? Of course you will find these in an entirely non-stalkeresque way, and will most definitely not be creepy about it. 

Without knowing who the type of person is that you are giving any gift to, be it serious or silly, it is hard to gauge what gifts they like. If they are a very practical person they might appreciate a more practical gift.

If their superlative is more likely to be ‘class-clown’ rather than ‘most organized’ they might appreciate a sillier gift. It all depends on the person you are giving the gift to.

An example for a practical gift may be if they are always complaining about not having enough hair-ties, get them a pack of hair ties. It’s within most Secret Santa price ranges and is a practical gift that many-a-person could use.

Another one might be socks, because, well there isn’t really a reason for this one, who doesn’t love socks? Especially fluffy ones with cats all over them, or themed socks… those are pretty great.

What is important to remember is that they, nor anyone else in the exchange will know it was you who gave the present, so if they don’t like it no biggie! (Still, that does not give you the right to gift them anything completely awful, unless they are your best-friend… then you can go to town.)

Another thing to remember is that if they don’t like it, they can always gift it to another person during this season of re-gifting!

But the most important thing of all is to not stress!

Secret Santa’s are all about having fun and being with new and old friends. With everything else going on in such a busy life, don’t make something meant to be fun a chore. Happy (re)Gifting season!