Guide · Templates
Secret Santa rules: three announcements you can copy
Three finished announcements rather than advice — office, family, and a group that only meets online. Lift one whole, change the names and dates, paste it in with your own name at the bottom. Each is followed by the exclusions it quietly implies and what they cost you in possible draws.
All three answer the same five questions before anyone asks: what to spend, when and how the gifts change hands, what happens to a late joiner, whether homemade and re-gifted things count, and how to opt out.
The office announcement
For a team channel: people who share a building, a fixed handover, and a budget that has to work for the most junior salary in the room as well as the most senior.
Office gift exchange — reply by Wednesday 3 December
Reply in by Wednesday 3 December. I'll draw that evening and send each person a link with the name they drew. No sign-up, no email addresses.
Budget: $25, a ceiling rather than a target. Something well chosen at $8 is a good gift and nobody is checking receipts. I'm not going to police it; just don't go well over, because a $60 gift puts whoever spent $22 in an awkward spot.
Handover: wrapped, in the box by the kitchen, by 9am on Thursday 18 December, name on the outside and nothing else. We open them at 3pm.
Joining late: ask, and the answer is yes — but one person has to volunteer to change who they had, and ends up knowing a pairing they otherwise wouldn't.
Homemade counts. Re-gifting counts if the thing is genuinely good and genuinely unused: a bottle you won't drink, yes; the conference tote, no.
Allergies or hard nos: send me a line and I'll attach it to your name so whoever draws you sees it.
Opting out: reply out. That's the entire message — you don't owe me a reason and I won't ask for one.
What it implies. Usually no exclusions at all: everyone may draw everyone, and the only edge removed is the one every draw removes, which is drawing yourself. Each rule you add is one you will later have to explain to somebody who feels singled out by it. The exception people ask for is department pairing, which is the same rule as a household.
What it costs. Very little at office sizes. Twelve colleagues with no exclusions have 176,214,841 possible draws; pair them into six departments of two and 59,245,120 remain, about a third of the space. Pairing everybody off costs roughly two thirds of the possibilities at every size we have checked, and it only bites in small groups.
The family announcement
For a group chat with your relatives in it: couples, an uneven spread of what money means to each household, and at least one person who would rather sit it out but would never say so unprompted.
Christmas draw — adults only, $30, names out on Sunday
Every adult who wants in, tell me by Sunday. I'll draw that evening and send each of you a link with the name you drew. Please read to the end; the last line matters most.
Budget: $30, a ceiling. It is there to protect whoever $30 is a real number for, not to cap whoever it isn't. To spend more on somebody, do that quietly, outside the draw.
Handover: bring it wrapped to Christmas dinner with the name on it; we do them after pudding. If you can't be there, post it to arrive by the 23rd.
Households: nobody draws anyone they live with — I set that in the tool, so you can't be handed your own husband by accident. Tell me before Sunday if yours has changed.
Joining late: new partners, new housemates, last-minute yeses — message me. After the draw it costs one person their clean surprise, because somebody has to volunteer to change who they had.
Homemade counts and always has. Re-gifting counts if it's good and unused, not if it's been moving between two cupboards since January and we all know it.
Opting out: if you'd rather not this year, tell me and it's done. No reason needed and I won't repeat it. Money, time, or simply not fancying it are the same answer to me, and I'd far rather you said so than quietly dreaded it.
What it implies. Households — not couples exactly, but everyone under one roof: a married pair, an adult child still at home, three siblings sharing a flat. The rule runs both ways, and it is most of why the draw is worth doing, because a gift you could have handed over at breakfast is not a surprise.
What it costs. Households are the expensive rule and the bill arrives at small sizes. Ten people with no exclusions have 1,334,961 possible draws; as five couples, 440,192 remain, which is ample and takes about eight shuffles to find. Six people containing a household of three drops from 265 draws to 36, and a household of four inside six leaves exactly zero — everyone in a household gives to somebody outside it, so a household can never be more than half the group. Four people who are two couples leaves four valid draws, and not the person you had last year on top can take it to none. When a small coupled family runs out of draws, the fix is more people, not fewer rules.
The remote and online-friends announcement
For a Discord server or a long-running group chat: postage, currencies that don't match, and no room in which anything is physically handed over.
Gift exchange — in by Sunday, ship by Friday 12 December
React or reply by Sunday. I'll draw that night and send everyone a link privately with the name they drew.
Budget: about $20 in your own currency — don't convert precisely, nobody is auditing exchange rates. Postage is on top, which isn't fair on whoever is furthest away, so if shipping pushes you well past it, say so.
Dates: ship by Friday 12 December so slow post still lands in time. Nobody opens anything until the call on the 27th — we do it on camera, which is the whole point.
Addresses: don't post yours in this channel, and I'm not making a spreadsheet. When your giver is ready to send they'll message you directly and ask; reply to them with your address and nothing else. If somebody asks you for yours, just send it and don't tell anyone who asked.
Joining late: ask. After the draw it costs one person a change of recipient and one extra pairing they'll know about, so earlier is much better.
Homemade and digital count if they're genuinely for that person; re-gifting counts if it's good and unused.
Opting out: reply out, or say nothing at all — I'll read silence as out and won't chase you. No reason needed and none will be asked for.
What it implies. Usually no exclusions either, which surprises people. Friends who don't share an address can draw each other freely, and the only rule this one adds is social: don't reveal yourself before the call.
What it costs. Eight people with no exclusions have 14,833 possible draws; the same eight as four couples have 4,752, which is comfortable. The rule that hurts a small remote group is not the person you had last year, because it stacks on top of everything else rather than replacing it. Four people who are two couples have exactly four valid draws, and a single last-year block can remove all four. If that happens, the tool names the rule that broke it before you press anything.
Addresses go in the gift message, not in a spreadsheet
A remote exchange needs postal addresses, and the default answer is a shared sheet: one link in the chat, one row per person. It is the worst thing in this guide. A sheet is readable by the whole group at once, which is a different object from each giver knowing one address. It is readable by anyone the link reaches after it leaves the group, and links get forwarded. It has no end date, so the exchange finishes in December and the sheet is still there the following March. And it lives in one person's personal cloud account, which quietly makes that account the thing standing between the group and everyone's home address.
The safe version is small and boring. Nobody publishes an address anywhere, including to the organizer. When a giver is ready to send, they message their recipient one-to-one and ask, and the recipient replies in that thread with the address and nothing else. The announcement says in advance that if somebody asks for your address you send it and don't say who asked — the line that stops the ask being a giveaway. Once the parcel arrives, both of you delete the message. That leaves one copy, held by the person who has to post it.
The honest cost: asking usually reveals the giver, a few days early, to one person. Most groups take that trade. If you would rather it held to the end, order from a shop that ships direct with a gift note and no sender name, or hand the relaying to somebody who isn't playing.
Editing these without breaking them
Change the amounts, the dates, the currency, the channel and the jokes, and cut whatever doesn't apply. Four things are worth keeping in whatever words you would actually use.
The budget as a ceiling. A figure presented as a target invites everyone to hit it exactly, and then $8 reads as a statement. Enforcement is the awkward half and there is no clever fix: say once, publicly, that you are not going to police it, then don't. One overspender is a small problem; a group quietly totting up receipts is the bigger one a policing rule creates.
A named handover. A date, a place and a mechanism, in one sentence. Most exchanges that go wrong go wrong here rather than at the draw — a gift left in a drawer, a parcel posted on the 22nd, four people who thought it was next Thursday.
The late-joiner line, with the cost inside it. Saying yes is easy; saying yes and naming what it costs is what stops somebody feeling misled afterwards.
The opt-out with no excuse clause. This is the line people cut and it does the most work. Let me know if you can't take part asks for a reason; reply out and that's the whole message does not. Somebody is having an expensive year, and a gift exchange should be a nice thing that happens to them rather than a bill.