Christmas time has arrived once again. For a lot of us that means it’s the time of giving and receiving gifts. The traditional game of Secret Santa, the practice of exchanging and receiving a gift without knowing who bought it for you, has been around for a long time. This gift giving tradition has only a single advantage and that is instead of buying a gift for each of your friends, you only have to buy one. Other than that one advantage, the tradition only creates trouble. Here is why I think Secret Santa is the worst.

First of all, there’s the awkwardness of setting a price limit for the gift. If you’re anything like me, you don’t want to offend anyone by suggesting a price limit that might be too high for some people. But, you also don’t want to be the person that has to say that the price limit is too high for you. So, what tends to happen is that no one suggests anything and it takes forever to finally figure out a price limit that works for everyone. Even then, there is no guarantee that everyone will be happy and content. 

Once that is settled, it is time to go pick out a gift. Sometimes, you might get lucky and been assigned one of your best friends. That makes the shopping 10x easier. But other times, you might have to figure out a gift for someone that you barely know. You want to be really thoughtful and figure out a gift that is perfect for them, but that is also extremely difficult when you don’t know much about them and don’t have the option to ask their likes and dislikes.

I don’t know why we stopped just asking people what they want and then just give it to them. That has always seemed as the easiest way for both parties involved. You don’t have to spend too much time on finding the gift, and the other person will definitely like it because they asked for it specifically!

You finally found the perfect gift, great! Now it is time for the gift exchange, another awkward encounter. I hope it’s not you, but there is always at least one person that clearly went over the price limit, making everyone else miserable. On top of that, there is also always that one person who took the cheap way out and made something handmade. When you’re good at DIY’ing stuff, great, definitely give it to me as a gift, I’d love that. But when this is your first time making something yourself and you’re just doing it to not spend any money, then no thank you I don’t need your gift of disappointment.

All of these reasons combined turn Christmas into the most stressful time of the year instead of the most joyful, all thanks to Secret Santa. I’m definitely not against giving gifts, don’t get me wrong, I’m just not a big fan of the whole charade of doing it the Secret Santa way.