Secret Santa is a festive custom rooted in Western Christmas and Saint Nicholas traditions. In this practice, individuals within a group or community are randomly allocated a recipient to whom they present a gift. The donor’s identity is meant to be kept confidential and not disclosed. This tradition is well-suited for office gatherings, holiday parties, and has become a treasured ritual among friends, families, and colleagues, creating lasting memories.
In this article, we introduce a modern method wherein an in-person Secret Santa celebration can be seamlessly transitioned to an online setting through Secret Santa Bash. This ensures that participants can engage in the festivities without any risk of discovering the identity of their Secret Santa.
Secret Santa Bash is an online organizer for Secret Santa gift exchanges, providing a systematic and user-friendly approach to hosting a Secret Santa gathering with friends and family. All aspects of communication, including the revelation of gift buddies, updates to wishlists, and more, are managed exclusively through email.
The following are the various steps involved in organizing an event using Secret Santa Bash:
- Create Secret Santa: Create your Secret Santa Party by entering the party (event) details, name / email of each participant in the party and more.
- Add Rules: If required, you can make special rules for people to be paired together.
- Manage Party: Even after the party has been created you can change the rules and even remove or add people by navigating to the ‘Manage’ page. As soon as the host initiates the party, Santa will personally dispatch an email to the inbox of each participant.
- View assigned gift buddy: You will receive an email having a link to their individual dashboard. Here, they can access party details, the person for whom they are purchasing a gift, and that individual’s wishlist.
- Update wishlist: Participants are encouraged to update their wishlists from their personal dashboards.
Working:
1. Click on this link to navigate to Secret Santa Bash and click on the ‘Get Started’ button.
2. Specify the Date, Location of the Secret Santa along with the Budget.
3. Next, in the Participant’ section, input the names of the participants and their email address. If you want to enable to direct pairing of two participants with each other, you can click on the checkbox under ‘Direct Loops’.
4. You can now add rules to prevent or force specific Secret Santa pairings. For this, scroll down to the ‘Rules’ section, choose the two members from the drop-down lists and then select the ‘Must give to’ or Cannot give to’ from the ‘Rule’ drop-down menu.
5. Finally, add an optional Personal Message, click the respective checkbox to confirm that you have the permission to use the participant’s e-mail addresses for the gift exchange and click on ‘Create My Event’.
6. A verification email is now sent to the host’s email address. With the instructions to manage the event. Click on the ‘Manage Your Party’ button in the email to navigate to your (host) Dashboard.
7. You can click on the corresponding ‘Edit’ icon to edit the Event details, Participant details, Rules, and more.
8. You can now click on ‘Start My Party’ to send each participant their Secret Santa party details and begin. Starting the party will trigger Santa to personally deliver your party details and personal message to all your participants’ inboxes including yours.
9. You (host) can also click on ‘View Pairings’ if required but you must remember that it’ll ruin the surprise of your Secret Santa party. To observe the updates such as who has viewed the party and who has updated the wishlist, you can visit the ‘Participants’ section of the dashboard.
10. You must click on the ‘View Party Details’ button in the email, to get the Secret Santa details such as Date, Location, Budget, Party size, and more including the assigned gift buddy that is not known to anyone else.
11. Along with the above, your gift buddy’s wishlist will be displayed on the page. You must also update your wishlist by clicking on the ‘Edit’ icon at the top right of the box.
Closing Comments:
Secret Santa Bash is a great and simple way to organize a Secret Santa party online with only emails. Just add rules / wishlists, send anonymous messages to your gift buddy, and enjoy the season of gift giving.
Click here to launch your Secret Santa.
