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More Christmas Memories

Ok, this is going to be another bitter sweet one, but I promise I will end on a positive note...

Today I am going to write about a Christmas tradition that I have experienced during probably every year of my career, namely Secret Santa. It is something I would recommend all schools doing, but there are some words of warning and helpful hints I want to share with you so that you can learn from the issues we had. I also want to use this story to illustrate the danger of Christmas traditions being ruined by a drive for 'efficiency'. Finally today I want to get a couple of moans off my chest about gifts that I was given in years past!

Lets start with a handy hint, shall we? If Secret Santa is something that you thinking of setting up, or even if it is a tradition in your school already, it is worth double checking that everyone fully understands the rules. By that, I mean that you should be clear that the amount you specify to be spent on a present is not a rough guide, nor is it merely a maximum spend, but that each present should cost within a few pence of the stated amount. I have seen people misunderstand this on many occasions, whether on purpose or without meaning to, and this has lead to the awkwardness of members of staff opening presents which clearly cost around 99p on the big day. I know this might only seem a little thing, but it is important to be fair.

On the flip side, Secret Santa is not an opportunity for brown nosing. It needs to be made clear that people should not go wildly over the top, as that can also cause awkwardness. If a member of staff is a personal friend of someone then they should buy them a separate present!

I know I am sounding like a control freak here, but I think that if you are going to do Secret Santa then you should do it properly.

Once you have established the parameters then the next thing you need to get right is to put someone in charge who knows exactly who is buying for who. It sounds obvious, but I have seen occasions where people have come away without a present having signed up and done their part, which is a real shame.

The real fun of Secret Santa is obviously choosing the gift for the person whose name you have selected. Obviously this can go horribly wrong if you go for a 'funny' gift, so if in doubt I would always go for the bottle of wine / box of chocolates option. You can't really legislate for poorly chosen presents though, so you are going to have to practice faking it, just in case! Two bad experiences that come to mind for me are when 'Santa' thought it was a good idea to buy me a Borat-style mankini and another year when I received an 'Elf on a Shelf'. 

Now it should be pretty clear from reading this post, but neither of those gifts really suited me, to put in mildly. I am a fan of Borat, but I don't possess the body or the confidence to dress like him, and I find the whole Elf on a Shelf thing abhorrent (maybe too strong a word but I want to get my point across clearly). I am afraid that both gifts met a similar fate, with Borat going straight in the bin and the Elf being left in one of the pews in our local church. I like to think that maybe he brought someone a bit of joy, but it certainly wasn't for me.

Apart from those two years, I think Secret Santa has looked after me quite well, and it became somewhat of a highlight of the pre-Christmas period for me over time. I do acknowledge that it did require a bit of effort on everyone's part, and this was the catalyst in recent times for one of the younger members of my staff to introduce measures to make it more time efficient for everyone. This involved a website that you had to visit, and even a wish-list that your chosen person was asked to put together. Needless to say that I didn't play ball with the whole wish list fiasco, but they had really drained the fun out of the whole thing by the end of my time in charge. Christmas and efficiency just don't go together!

One more thing, in relation to Secret Santa. One year we agreed that all gifts would be bought from charity shops and I would thoroughly recommend  doing that as it really added something to the experience.

As promised, a positive note to finish on...

My absolute favourite part of Christmas in school actually happened in January, once the festivities had finished. It was known amongst the staff that I, along with one other teacher, was a huge fan of the strawberry and orange creams that you get in a well known tin of chocolates that is commonly popular over Christmas. We were therefore inundated with these in January, much to both our pleasures. Being in the minority definitely has its advantages!


 

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