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Each year at Thanksgiving, my family has drawn names out of a hat to determine who they'll be a "Secret Santa" for the Christmas gift exchange. It's important to our family culture that no one else in the family knows who each other got in order to keep it interesting. The only rule to the selection is that you can't pick your spouse. If that happens, you draw again and put your spouse's name back in the hat.
Due to logistics and travel plans this year, we're celebrating Christmas early (only two weeks after Thanksgiving).
In order to allow for plenty of time to look for gifts, we'd like to select names now. Our family is located across the U.S.A. Some members have access to the Internet and some don't (e.g. my dear Grandma).
What I would like to do is have a fair protocol that simulates drawing names out of a hat and ensures some level of secrecy without being overly complex. Some websites, like the former drawnames.com or others like it usually require people to put in their email address. I want to make absolutely sure that my family's email addresses don't get abused so I don't want to trust them to another site.
The best protocol I can come up with is:
Am I missing a better protocol? By better, I mean something that would allow more secrecy. Again, due to logistics and to keep things simple, I don't want to have to build a website.
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Pickster is a simple little app to help you pick names randomly from a collection - just like drawing names out of a hat, but with less paper... and hats. Paste in text as a new list! Copy names to your phone's clipboard with commas, tabs, or newline characters separating each name.
The Elfster virtual hat helps you draw names and so much more. Our online Secret Santa generator makes your Secret Santa even easier, and you can start a Wish List to get and give the best gifts. Don't forget that you can play on the go with our iPhone app or Android app.
The DrawNames Secret Santa App is available for iPhone and Android.
Using a Hat This is the most basic way to draw names. Write people's names on slips of paper, toss them into a hat (or bowl, or box, or whatever), and pass it around for drawing. As long as no one looks right at their person, it works pretty well.
Get some paper and some envelopes. Number two of each envelope and two of each paper so that you have 2 "1" envelopes and 2 "1" papers, 2 "2" envelopes and 2 "2" papers, etc.
Have either you or your wife write every couple's names on matching papers, for example: you could put your name on a "1" sheet and your wife would have to be on the other "1" sheet. Address the matching envelope appropriately (your address would be on both "1" envelopes in the example).
Turn all of the papers and envelopes over so that none of the names or addresses can be seen (you did remember to write the numbers on the back of the paper and envelopes, right?) Swap places so that the person that did not do the writing stuffs the envelopes. Just be sure to put every numbered paper into an envelope with a different number (e.g.: never put a "1" paper into a "1" envelope). That way, you'll know that A) nobody got themselves and B) nobody got their significant other.
Not every answer needs to involve a computer! Just ask your nearest D&D player. :-P
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