Skip to main content

How to win at Stealing Santa

To me a "win" is giving a great present to someone who'll enjoy it, and not being wasteful. That can be tricky with these games.

What is Stealing Santa?

It's a version of secret santa played at workplaces or in extended families. Each person contributes a gift, and draws a number to determine the order of play.

Player one selects a gift and opens it. Each following player opens a gift and can keep it or (forcibly) swap it with any already-opened gift. The last player has the choice of all the gifts.

Why I hate this game

Clearly it runs totally against the idea of buying a present for a specific person who you have thought about and brought something that would suit that person. Also, giving gifts for an unknown recipient often results in unwanted and wasteful purchases, sometimes thrown away.

Why I love this game

If played well, the worst outcome is neutral and the best outcome can be someone getting a gift they love. What? Let me explain.

My wife didn't want to go in this game at her office, for very good reasons about waste and consumerism. But there's office social pressure to join in, so we devised a winning strategy so that she can take part in the social aspect but without the negative consequences.

What to contribute

I heard some people take along a gift they want themself. When their turn comes, they either pick it from the pile, or swap for it.

Our variation is that my wife took a re-gift - it's a really great gift but something she already had one of. (That's win number one - no extra consumerism required).

When her turn came, she picked it from the pile and explained what it was. It turned out to be the perfect present for someone else. When their turn came, they quickly swapped to get it.

Success. The gift ended up in the hands of someone who really wanted it, will put it to good use and get great value from it.

A double win

Apart from finding a good home for the re-gift, my wife also ended up with a present that she likes and will use.


That was an extra bonus, not in our plan. We think the solar light will work well for our balcony. If not, it can always go back into the game next year ;)

A word about re-gifting

Sometimes a gift is a good idea, but you already have the exact same thing. Or it doesn't suit you for a particular reason, that the giver wouldn't know. Sometimes we sell these items (get our tips for that) but re-gifting is another option.

Related reading:

Tips for standard Secret Santa.
For normal present giving get my free ebook of great gift ideas (for people who don't want stuff).

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My October challenge

Decluttering can be overwhelming. I've been stuck. Shelves and boxes and drawers full of stuff I should go through but not sure where to start. Aaagh - there's so much of it. The solution? So for myself (and for you if you want) I've developed a strategy. I've picked 31 categories in advance. I plan to tackle one item per day of October. If I miss a few that's OK. The point is to overcome overwhelm. To focus on one thing at a time. To move forward instead of being stuck. My favourite way to declutter is to sell online . (I even wrote a  free ebook of tips for selling online). I also like to recycle or upcycle things. Wanna join in? I've chosen categories where I think most people would have excess. If there's a category you have already dealt with, that's cool. Have a rest day - or go even further in one of the previous areas. The list Ok so here's my plan for this October. Bookmark this post or download the picture of my notes. For each category I ...

5 Reasons why we hoard - and they're wrong

"Less is More" is one of the catch-cries of downsizing. Often the fewer things we have the more we value them. So it's a great title for a book that's basically a manual for how to de-clutter your home. The introductory chapter of Less is More: How to De-clutter Your Life gives some great insights into why we find it so hard to reduce our stuff. Here are 5 of them - the last one is one of the biggest for me. 1. The cost of holding on. We were raised by our parents and grandparents and in their day items were expensive and space was cheap. It made sense in those days to hold onto stuff just in case you ever needed it. But today housing is expensive and items are cheap. It's hard to change a habit, but now we save much more by downsizing. 2. Keeping it in the family. For some reason we prefer to give things to those close to us. Again this was viable in the days of big families and lots of children to receive hand-me-downs. But these days we have smaller fa...

20 unplugged ideas

May 1-7 is Screen-Free Week . It's about spending time away from the screen and more time with each other - or doing things we love. It's a great chance to break the work-tired-watchTV-ads-shop-work cycle. This list of twenty alternative ideas is great for screen-free week. It's also a great reminder of things we could enjoy if we're shopping and spending less - and maybe working less and enjoying life more.