What is Secret Santa and How Can Your Office Play?

Christmas is on its way meaning Santa will soon be here with a sack full of presents for everyone. Secret Santa is a fun, easy and entertaining way to help businesses of all sectors and sizes get in the Christmas spirit, for members of staff to get to know each other better, and to boost morale at what can often be an extremely busy time of year.

If you’re keen to introduce Secret Santa at work this festive season but are unsure what’s involved, take a look at what exactly is Secret Santa is and how you can play it in your office or at the company Christmas party.

What Is Secret Santa?

Secret Santa is a long-standing Christmas tradition in workplaces across the world. Different countries and even companies and organizations throughout the United States have slightly different versions of the game.

One of the most generic versions of the event involves members of staff drawing random names to become a colleague’s Secret Santa. The Secret Santa is presented with a wish list of present ideas of which they select one to give the recipient of the gift.

When the recipient opens their gift, they have to guess which member of the team their Secret Santa was, which is often the most fun part of the game.

How Can Your Office Play Secret Santa?

An effective way to generate awareness that your company is gearing up for a game of Secret Santa this Christmas, is to send round a company email informing every employee and asking them if they would like to take part in the game.

The names of those wanting to participate should be written down on a piece of paper. Each participant should also write down a couple of suggestions for a gift, the more specific the better.

The names should be drawn randomly from a box to haphazardly assign a Secret Santa to each player. The host of the game should then inform each player their assigned name.

A ‘gift exchange party’ should be arranged, either in the office or at the company Christmas party, when everyone gets together for the present receiving event. The gifts should be tagged with the recipient’s name on but not the name of the Secret Santa.

After the presents have been handed out and opened the recipients should guess who their Secret Santa was.

Secret Santa Generator

For managers, owners or any employee tasked with organizing a the game at work, they may want to use a generator to help simply and speed up the process.

Secret Santa Generators are online organizers which provide a fast, free and fun way to organize the whole process, from invites and name matching to the exchanging gifts event.

These popular tools in the arranging of this time-honored festive holiday tradition can make it significantly easier to come up with a holiday gift exchange list for a memorable, fun and well-organized game of Secret Santa.

Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "What is Secret Santa and How Can Your Office Play?" was first published on Small Business Trends