things kevin hates

Chances are you’ve probably been involved in at least one secret santa exchange. In case you haven’t heard of it, the way it works is this: you get a group of people, and each person writes his or her name on a slip of paper. Then you take turns drawing names. You give a gift to the person whose name you pick. There are a number of variations on this theme, but they all go something like that. It’s a great idea—until it goes horribly wrong and, due to poor planning or whatever, one person gets completely screwed over. And the sole time in my entire life I’ve participated in a secret santa, I was the person who got screwed and ended up with nothing. I’m not really opposed to the concept in general, but I am still a little bit bitter.

A couple of years ago I was in a play which had rehearsals during the holiday season, so we did a secret santa. The way we did it was that we secretly gave a few smaller gifts here and there to our recipient, before final revealing our identities on the last day of the exchange. The gifts were nothing much—I gave away a few boxes of candies, some chocolate chip cookies, things like that. Now, it wasn’t mandatory to give any smaller gifts in advance of the final one, so I guess I wasn’t too alarmed. But the day came for gifters to reveal themselves to giftees, and I got nothing. I was completely screwed over. Somehow, no one had drawn my name. As far as I could tell, everyone who had gotten a present also gave one. The stage manager even had a list confirming that everyone had been assigned someone to give a gift to. I’m sure had I spent enough time poring over the list I could have found the problem, but I never did that. And besides, at that point, it was a little late. Either someone got a gift but hadn’t drawn a name, or two people drew the same person and that person didn’t complain. I really don’t know.

I guess I could complain about secret santas from a more theoretical perspective (disparity of time and effort put into it, possible disparities in value of gifts if a money cap is not put in place, etc.), but they seem like a decent concept, albeit one tempered with the economic problems of gift-giving.* By all means, enjoy a secret santa with your officemates or family: but for goodness’ sake, make sure you have a referee to keep these sorts of things from happening!

* George Will wrote a recent column on gift-giving and why it’s a bad idea from an economic perspective. That article led to this blog post from Psychology Today’s website, in which the author examines gift-giving as a form of ritual which creates social relationships, noting that humans may not be maximizing economic advantages, but are building societal ties and expressing feelings.