If you celebrate Christmas, you may be thinking about getting little gifts for all of your friends, and they probably are too. But maybe you don't have enough cash to get gifts for everyone, or maybe you don't want to give a gift to that girl that sits next to you in math, even though she is getting you something and you know her feelings would be hurt if you didn't get something for her. Or maybe you are just tired of getting something for everybody like all the other years, and you want to do something different this year! Some of your friends may be thinking the same thing as well. So maybe you want to get a group of friends together and have a Secret Santa gift exchange!

I'm sure some of you know what I am talking about, but for those of you that don't, I'm here to explain! If you want to put together a Secret Santa gift exchange, all you need to start is a group of friends that are willing to do it with you. Once you have everyone together, put everyone's name on a piece of paper and put the paper into a hat, bag, or something similar (you just need something that you can draw names out of).

Once you have done that, have everyone draw a name out of a hat or bag. If someone draws their own name, have everyone put the slips of paper back and draw again. You can look at the name you drew, but don't share who it is! That would ruin the game! Whichever name you get is the person you have to get a gift for.

Once everyone has a name that isn't their own, decide on a price limit. It could be $5 or it could be $20, or any other price as long as all of you are comfortable with. Make sure you stick to the price limit too! It will make things easier. For example, say you decide on $10 as your limit. That would mean that whatever you decide to buy, it should be $10 or under. Remember, this was supposed to keep most of the cash in your pocket, so it's totally okay to have the limit as $5 or less, as long as you can get something that would mean something to your person. It's also perfectly fine to have the limit $25 or higher, although that is getting expensive for an idea that was supposed to be more of an inexpensive one. It's up to all of you, so it's your choice. Just make sure you all agree on it.

After you have decided on the price limit, decide on the day to bring the gifts in. It could be the last day of school before break, or it could be the week before. Just choose whatever works best for all of you. Make sure to give yourselves enough time to buy the gifts. You don't want to make the date a week from starting and have half of you show up empty-handed!

Between the time you start and the time you are all supposed to bring in the gift, make sure you get something for you secret person. If you would rather, you could even make something for them. To make things easier for you, if you wanted to, you could have everyone make a list of three or four things that they want for Christmas. So that way, if you happen to get your best friend's boyfriend's friend's name, you won't be totally clueless if you didn't know him before. You just grab the person's list, and you instantly have some ideas of what to get for him or her.

If you wanted to, you could add a twist to the game. Instead of getting all serious or semi-serious gifts, say that everyone has to get a gag gift. Or you could make it something as strange as that all the gifts have to all start with the letter Q. It would be interesting to see what everyone would come up with for that!

This game is great for groups of people, especially if several or even all of you are low on cash. Then everyone can be included and nobody feels left out. It also goes along well with the Christmas spirit!

Now I need to go figure out what I'm doing for my friends for Christmas!
Lckygrl13