Being the incredibly popular person I am, I was recently invited to a Christmas party.* While I was distressed by the fact that this invitation was extended on November 2nd \u2013 almost two whole months before Christmas \u2013 I set aside my grievances as I had something more pressing to muster indignation towards: a Secret Santa was planned for the party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Secret Santa is a \u201cgame\u201d designed by people who have an intense hatred for merriment and joy exceeded only by their disdain for the socially anxious population. It would be used as a method of torture in the afterlife, but fortunately, even demons can\u2019t stand to participate in the agonizing activity. Secret Santa is the process of secretly being assigned a person out of a group of individuals that you will give one or more gifts to anonymously. Typically, the people participating in a Secret Santa are groups of friends, work colleagues, or sadist support networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have three distinct reasons for my contempt of Secret Santa which I will discuss briefly in this article. I could write much more than what I have, but I thought it best to keep it short and not lose my audience.** My goal with this piece is to convince the prospective initiator of a Secret Santa to choose an alternative, less unpleasant Christmas activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first reason why the concept of a Secret Santa should be erased off the surface of the earth is the emotional emptiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The entire goal of a Secret Santa is to force you to get gifts for someone you do not know well. This is a terrible idea. Gift giving is not an enjoyable practice because of the gifts, but rather the thought behind them. Or at least, that\u2019s the hope. Unfortunately, we live in a capitalist society where the quality of your celebration of Christmas is tied to the monetary value arbitrarily applied to consumer goods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I apologize, I\u2019m getting off track. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The point is that gifts are only truly appreciated when you know that the person giving you the gift put thought and care behind it. They know you well as a person and care about you, and the gift is evidence of this fact. This is completely absent from Secret Santa. A gift received for Secret Santa, in contrast, is comparable to the little toy you get after a dentist appointment when you\u2019re younger \u2013 it\u2019s nice to have, but it really doesn\u2019t have any emotional weight attached to it.*** Initially, in a Secret Santa, you don\u2019t even know who got you the gift when you open it, so you are unable to share that moment of excitement and joy with them. Furthermore, if the person who gave you the gift isn\u2019t a good friend, it\u2019s completely meaningless because you know there wasn\u2019t any real thought or care put into that box of chocolates bought one day before the party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, you may protest: \u201cBut if you do a Secret Santa with a bunch of friends, it\u2019s more fun!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How naive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no point to doing a Secret Santa with friends because if they\u2019re good enough friends that sincere thought is put into the gifts, then you\u2019re going to be getting each other gifts anyways! Regardless of a Secret Santa or not, friends who care about each other deeply will get each other gifts for Christmas. There\u2019s no reason to exceedingly obfuscate the gift-giving process. Why is it enjoyable to purposefully mislead and lie to your friends? These are the values that Secret Santa promotes: manipulation via deceit, blind consumerism, and performative altruism. Secret Santa and a just society fundamentally cannot coexist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second argument against Secret Santa that I\u2019d like to posit is the social awkwardness. I\u2019ve saved this point for the middle because it only really applies to Secret Santa when you don\u2019t know the other participants well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Simply put, buying gifts for people you are not close to is an excruciating process. You don\u2019t know enough about the recipient to ensure that they won\u2019t despise their gift, much less actually appreciate it. Even if they genuinely do like it, you\u2019ll never know if they\u2019re actually just feigning gratitude because it\u2019s the socially accepted thing to do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Secret Santa is intentionally designed to prevent you from learning more about the person you must buy gifts for. Like the name suggests, it’s a secret. You can\u2019t just go up and ask the person you\u2019ve been assigned to what they want. You are meant to anticipate their desires based on minimal interactions with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is nerve-racking for what I will diplomatically refer to as socially conscious people. I am one of these people and understand their plight intimately. I have been paralyzed by indecision many times while trying to shop for a Secret Santa. I have nearly thrown up while watching someone open a gift I have given them, wracked by anxiety about whether they actually like it or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes people try to get around this shortcoming by creating little informational slips for people to fill out. They ask about what sort of things that person is interested in so that the person buying gifts for them has a better understanding of what they will enjoy. Unfortunately, there are two ways these informational slips can fail. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, they\u2019re oftentimes just not specific enough. Okay, I know this person\u2019s favorite color is purple and they like tea, but that\u2019s not enough information to actually help me shop for them. These are the sort of surface-level things that you actually probably know about your peers, even if you don\u2019t know them well personally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second method of failure is when they are too specific. This happens when people understand the issues of the first failure, but don\u2019t address them properly. If the problem is that the information is too vague to inform a prospective gift giver, then the solution must be to be more explicit, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At this point, you\u2019re just writing a wish list. This completely removes the surprise element of receiving a gift, which is an incredibly important factor for the enjoyment of the process. It\u2019s no better than just getting them a gift card \u2013 you don\u2019t decide what to get the gift recipient, they do. Once again, this intrinsically wears away at the foundation of the meaningfulness of gift-giving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My third argument is less of an argument and more of an alternative. I believe that the experience of merriment and humor that misguided individuals believe will be found in Secret Santa is instead actually present in, drumroll please\u2026 White Elephant Gift Exchanges. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A White Elephant Gift Exchange is a game where a group of people each bring one or more gifts and collectively pool them together. Players then each take turns either taking and opening a gift, or stealing an already opened gift from another player. Oftentimes, a random element such as a die or the like is included to add more randomness to the game. Additionally, more often than not, the gifts brought to a White Elephant are silly or eccentric gifts. They aren\u2019t meant to be for a specific person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first reaction I expect from this is: \u201cQuinn, you\u2019re being hypocritical! White Elephants don\u2019t have any of the emotional significance of gift giving that you said was absent in Secret Santa.\u201d I realize this and agree with you, but where the two activities differ is their goals. The act of giving a gift is the point of Secret Santa \u2013 the goal is to make the recipient of the gift feel happy with the gift. The goal of a White Elephant Gift Exchange is to have fun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The most fun I\u2019ve had at a Christmas party was from swapping ridiculous gag gifts between family members and friends while making jokes and enjoying each other\u2019s company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
No lies, no secrets, no anxiety. Just Christmas fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the next time you think about organizing a Secret Santa, please consider some other options first. It doesn\u2019t have to be a White Elephant if you don\u2019t want to. Just please, please, stop doing Secret Santa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Footnotes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
* I am also incredibly humble and honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
** Yes, three pages is short. I have many<\/em> issues with Secret Santa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n *** Or when you\u2019re a teenager \u2013 I don\u2019t judge\u2026 Well, I guess I kind of do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Being the incredibly popular person I am, I was recently invited to a Christmas party.* While I was distressed by the fact that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion-pieces","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1268"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1271,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions\/1271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blueandread.asbarcelona.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}