It’s time of Secret Santa in many companies again! Not here in Korea where I live now, but we had it back in Sweden. That made me think, what was the most elaborate or cool gift you either gave or got from Secret Santa?
We had a max cap on about $10 (that was 10 years ago). What I did was I bought beef for $10 about a week before the Secret Santa event. I dry curred it (similar to what I did here https://jeena.net/air-dried-ham ), then I packaged it into a plastic bag and that was the present.
The person who got it was terrified, because they had no idea what it was. Everyone else had a key chain or some small gadget, etc. Because it was Secret Santa there was no way for me to explain what it is, with one exception, if this gift was voted the best gift of all of them (we were about 25 people), then this Secret Santa would be relieved and would get a $100 gift card as a price.
Luckily for me this present actually won because it was so different from anything else and I was able to explain that I bought the meat for $10 and then curred it without spending more money than allowed, and by doing so the worth of the present grew significantly over $10 and that this was my goal.
The guy then cut up half of the meat so that everyone could have a bite and try it and took the rest home to his family with him.
How about you?
Not me personally but I had a colleague who got the best gift possible. Dude is as close to a stereotypical American guy as it gets (which I guess is quite funny by European standards), so a colleague got him a ketchup applier. That’s shaped like a gun. That you use by firing the trigger… Somehow the dispenser was even made in the EU
I think this Amazon link might be it… not affiliated, no idea where colleague got the thing from
We do a slightly higher price cap of $25 but there’s only 4 of us and we’re pretty tight. I have a lot of fun with it and make gift baskets. My deep and abiding love of a good deal and thrift stores makes it a game for me. I go to value village and scour the store lol. Last year the basket I made was for my colleague that’s a baker and loooves Christmas. So I found a small springform pan (didn’t even look like it had been used once!) and a cute Xmas tea towel to line the bottom. Then a stainless pastry scraper and Xmas cookie cutters, jar of homemade jam, and some vegan chocolates as his partner is vegan. There was something else in there too but I can’t remember what now. He loved it! I did one for my boss the year before and it was a hit as well.
Back in the day my friend group did a secret Santa but it was like $50 and before we opened the presents we all had to pick a number out of a hat. So the thing is whoever gets number one opens the present and that’s it, on to the next. But everyone after that, once they’ve opened it they can either keep it, or steal someone else’s! So you really want to be at the end of the line. It was a lot of fun and there was a ton of swapping around of presents. They were good ones too like a year membership to BCAA, a massive chunk of amethyst (that’s what I got!), three bottles of booze and a stack of scratch cards. I made a custom record bag. There was a bunch of other things but it’s been so long I don’t remember them. It would be cool to do that again.
