How I keep costs down at Christmas with a family secret Santa

Secret Santa is usually related to workplace Christmas events or playful items handed out between friendship teams. Nevertheless, a few the Perfect Residence staff members have turned secret Santa right into a household custom to assist hold prices beneath management at Christmas.  

Worrying about shopping for Christmas items is common presently of yr. Nevertheless, the prospect of filling that area beneath the Christmas tree, partnered with this yr’s spiralling prices is frankly terrifying. 

Final yr the common Brit spent £548 (opens in new tab) per particular person on Christmas items. Nevertheless, Perfect Residence’s Editor Heather Younger and Content material Editor Holly Walsh have discovered a technique to hold that determine beneath management by making a secret Santa settlement with their household. It may simply be the money-saving tip many people want this Christmas. 

‘My household all have their birthdays inside 3 weeks of Christmas, so current shopping for in December may be fairly full on,’ says Holly of how the unique gifting settlement happened. ‘So it was determined a number of years in the past that we must always do secret Santa when it got here to purchasing one another Christmas items.’

Heather and her household began their secret Santa custom extra not too long ago: ‘Doing secret Santa with my husband’s household began through the pandemic when relations had been on furlough and budgets had been being squeezed. The youngsters within the household nonetheless get presents from everybody, however we now do a Secret Santa for the adults.’

The fundamentals of secret Santa are everybody places their identify right into a ‘pot’ and attracts a reputation out. The entire thing is nameless, and whereas this course of used to occur round a Santa hat with scraps of paper, there at the moment are web sites reminiscent of DrawNames.co.uk (opens in new tab) that allow you to draw names nearly.

Secret Santa’s normally include a worth cap, and each Heather and Holly’s household opted for a £25 restrict to assist hold prices down for everybody. Nevertheless, even when you stretched to items beneath £50 you’ll nonetheless be saving by slicing down on the variety of items you purchase.

Holly’s household has an additional trick to verify no cash is wasted. ‘We normally all give 2 or 3 solutions for ‘Santa’ to choose from, so there’s nonetheless a stage of shock concerned.’