Santa's Calling You - The Secret Santa Box
The perfect addition to your Video Call with Santa
At Santa’s Calling You, we haven’t rested on our laurels over 2021 – instead, we’ve thought of all the new ways we could bring you the best possible Santa’s Calling You experience to enhance your live video call with Santa Claus from the North Pole. One treat the whole family can enjoy is our new Secret Santa Box, available as an add-on to your video call with Santa. Packed full with items for the whole family to enjoy together, the Secret Santa Box enhances our message that ‘it is not what is under the Christmas Tree that matters, but what is around it that counts’.
Handpicked by our Chief Elf, they won’t tell us exactly what’s in there (they made lots of dreadful puns about ‘Elf and Safety’, and ‘that would be bad for your ‘Elf’) as that’s Top Secret, but they did say that in addition to family activities, there is a lovely keepsake gift in there for you to treasure for future Christmases.
But when did Secret Santa gifting start? And where? Well, it wasn’t a jolly man dressed in red with a long white beard. The original Secret Santa was a man called Larry Dean Stewart, and he would gift money to people he met on the street each December.
Larry was born on 1st April 1948 in Kansas, and earned his fortune in long-distance phone services, and the burgeoning cable industry. But he hadn’t always been so lucky to be wealthy and comfortable. In 1979, he was nursing a cup of coffee in a restaurant, trying to forget the fact that he had just been made redundant for the second time just before the Christmas holidays. He looked around him, and realised he wasn’t alone, taking particular note of the waitress taking orders in a very thin jacket in the freezing cold who would have been on minimum wage. He made a resolution there and then to just walk the streets donating money to those who needed it every December, and over a period of 26 years, he donated around $1.3 million to grateful recipients. He didn’t restrict his generosity to Christmas, either – shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, he donated $25,000 in hundred dollar bills to the shocked residents of New York.
Sadly, Larry died in 2007, but he has left quite a legacy – and not just in every office Secret Santa around the world. His identity only became known in the year before he died, and he even founded the Society of Secret Santas.
Secret Santa is known by a variety of names around the world – in Ireland, he’s Kris Kindle (from ‘Christkindl’), and in the UK, Kris Kringle. Other English speakers will probably recognise him from either of those two names, as will Austrians. However, in Germany, you’re more likely to make the acquaintance of Wichteln, which comes from the word meaning goblin, or elf. Secret Santa is also alive and well and going by the name of Julklapp in Scandinavia, where he knocks on doors and runs away, leaving a gift behind.
There are annual Secret Santa exchanges on social media too, with Secret Santa groups on Reddit (which now has upward of 85,000 participants!), Twitter, and Facebook, connecting strangers from all over the world to swap gifts. Indian Twitter’s Secret Santa was started by Darshan Parekh from Mumbai – it has now expanded to include New Delhi, Chennai, and Bengaluru. Users have to fill in a form with their name and contact details, together with a short wish list. Each city has a co-ordination who assigns gift recipients to help it run smoothly. Even Bill Gates has got in on the act, once gifting a Minecraft Edition X-Box One to a Reddit user called Aerrix.
When it comes to it, the most important thing about a Secret Santa gift is that it’s given anonymously. The enjoyment is often in the surprise, especially if – as with most office Secret Santa exchanges – there is a strict low budget, and an expectation of a ‘joke’ present which is to be enjoyed at the Christmas party and not far beyond.
The best thing about being a Secret Santa is that all the fun really is in the giving – especially when it’s a thoughtful gift which doesn’t break the bank either.
So get your Secret Santa box ordered at the same time as booking your live video call with Santa Claus from the North Pole, and why not add a Letter from Santa Claus to invite the children to the call as well? Then all you need to do is get those Christmas jumpers ready, decorate your room so that Santa Claus can see you getting into the Christmas spirit, and you’re ready for your call!
