Blog
Ideas, guides and good habits for gift exchanges.
Gift exchanges in a hybrid team, without the office-only crowd winning
The people in the room get the good version and the people at home get a parcel. Here is how to run one exchange rather than two.
Wishlists: giving ideas without spoiling the surprise
A wishlist that names a product turns a gift into a transaction. One that names a direction makes every gift better. The difference is how you ask.
Fifty Secret Santa gifts under twenty, sorted by who you drew
Not a list of gadgets. Fifty ideas grouped by the kind of person you are buying for, plus the five that always disappoint.
Office birthdays: the system that stops people being forgotten
Every office has the same failure: the first birthdays of the year get cake and the ones in August get nothing. A draw fixes it in one setup.
Twelve ways to play Secret Santa differently
The classic draw works. These twelve variations change the brief without touching the mechanism — for groups that have done the same thing five years running.
A leaving gift without the email chain
Collections for a departing colleague are the worst-organised thing in most offices. Here is why, and what to do instead — including when a draw is the wrong tool.
Couples, flatmates, pairs: getting exclusions right
Exclusions are the one setting that decides whether a draw is enjoyable or awkward. Which pairs to mark, which to leave alone, and when too many make the draw impossible.
Where Secret Santa comes from, and what it is called elsewhere
The custom is younger than it looks, and every country has its own name and its own rules. A short history of Secret Santa, Wichteln, amigo invisible and the rest.
The golden rules of a gift exchange that actually works
Seven rules, all of them decided before the draw. Every group that has had a bad exchange broke one of them, and usually the same one.
Bringing a team together with a gift exchange, on no budget
Ten euros a head and one afternoon beats most team-building days, for a reason that has nothing to do with the gifts.
Organising a gift exchange between friends, step by step
The whole thing takes an evening of decisions and three minutes of setup. Here is the order that stops the group chat from eating the idea alive.
Eight occasions for a gift draw that have nothing to do with Christmas
Drawing names solves a problem that is not seasonal: a group wants to exchange gifts without anyone spending eight times over. Here is where else it works.