How To Make Secret Santa More Fun: Activities and Ideas Beyond Gift Exchange

Secret Santa has long been a favorite holiday tradition. The rules are simple: players draw names, buy gifts, and exchange them at the appointed time. This ritual alone is festive, but why stop there?

Yet, gifts are only one part of the magic. What if you add more activities, jokes, and shared fun to the game? In this article, we’ll share ideas and formats that make your Secret Santa more fun and festive, turning it into an unforgettable part of Christmas.

Why Add Activities to Secret Santa

Exchanging gifts is delightful, but sometimes it can feel predictable. Moreover, if you limit it only to the exchange, this part of the holiday will end quickly and leave few lasting memories.

Adding small activities turns the ritual into a real event that sparks emotions and brings people closer together. Here are the extra reasons to expand your Secret Santa activity by adding more games:

1. Balancing attention. In classic Secret Santa, participants don’t always get the chance to write down their wishes. As a result, one person might receive a simple practical item, while another gets something much more valuable. This imbalance can cause bitter feelings. Extra activities provide shared emotions and fun memories, making the holiday meaningful even if the gift was not as good as expected.
2. Maximum engagement. People will feel like active participants in a shared process. The game expands beyond giving and receiving and turns into a shared activity. The holiday atmosphere feels much more alive, with added communication, adventures, and unexpected moments.
3. Getting to know each other better. Extra activities during Secret Santa allow participants to learn more about each other. Mini-games, contests, and creative tasks create natural opportunities for connection. Participating in quizzes, pictionary, and other games becomes a safe form of self-expression — people can show their personality without pressure. As a result, the group gains shared experiences and inside jokes, which bring people closer than formal introductions ever could.
4. Forming unique traditions. When you add special activities to workplace Secret Santa year after year, your team gradually develops its own style of celebrating. The anticipation for the holiday grows, because people look forward not just to their gifts but to the game, memorable jokes, and happy moments.

Who Will Benefit from Adding More Activities to Secret Santa?

Secret Santa exchange is fun and enjoyable as it is. Yet, if you want more excitement, surprises, and more connection between the players, you can easily upgrade the traditional exchange. Here's when it can be helpful:

For Workplace Teams

In offices, Secret Santa is often organized formally. An HR manager or team leader makes lists, includes everyone with no exception, and runs a quick gift exchange. Employees end up participating without genuine interest. The game loses its spontaneity and sincerity: gifts are chosen hastily, with little thought, just to follow the rules.

Extra team-building activities can liven up the process, helping coworkers compete, have fun, and bringing back the emotions and meaning of the game.

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For Families

In families, extra activities can play an even greater role than the gifts themselves. For both children and adults, the imporance of the holiday is sharing happy moments and holiday atmosphere.

A game, a contest, or a special ritual creates lasting memories. Children eagerly wait for the moment when the whole family gathers to share in a common activity. Adults gain a chance to move away from routine, and experience the holiday as genuine closeness with loved ones. Over time, the activity turns into a tradition and creates a joyful anticipation.

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How To Combine Secret Santa With Work

In the workplace, Secret Santa can play a far greater role than just being a bit of entertainment before or after Christmas. By expanding the mechanics of the game with additional activities, you can turn it into a tool for strengthening team spirit and developing skills that are directly useful at work.

Employees take part not only in exchanging gifts but also in mini-games, contests, or quests. This means they interact in unfamiliar roles, step outside the boundaries of standard office communication, and gain new experiences of cooperation. It helps break down barriers between different teams or departments and encourages colleagues to understand one another better in daily work.

Adding activities to Secret Santa can help build competencies that are directly relevant to the office:

• Creative challenges train flexibility of mind and the ability to find nonstandard solutions under time pressure.
• Playful performance tasks allow people to practice public speaking skills in a light, safe environment.
• Team competitions teach colleagues to negotiate, distribute roles effectively, and listen to each other’s ideas.

How To Integrate Secret Santa Into Education

Secret Santa as an educational game? It may sound unusual — and even a bit intimidating to schoolchildren, since they usually see the tradition as a break from lessons.

But if you carefully weave in educational elements without going overboard, the game can easily become an effective tool for learning and child development.

Extra activities can directly support the school curriculum:

• Clues for quests can only be unlocked once a team solves a math problem, cracks a riddle, or names the correct term. Students won’t even notice how smoothly they complete assignments in order to keep the game — and the holiday — going. At the same time, they’ll remember the material better because it’s tied to positive emotions.
• Secret Santa fosters empathy. Children must think carefully about what would truly make a classmate happy — even one they don’t know well. This builds imagination, empathy, and social skills that traditional curricula often overlook.
• Creative tasks build expressive speech. Kids practice sharing their thoughts clearly and in an engaging way.
• Group games reduce shyness and awkwardness. Students begin to speak more freely, find common ground with peers they may not have interacted with before, and build a stronger classroom community.

5 Secret Santa Games to Liven Up Your Gift Exchange

We’ve put together a selection of ideas you can adapt to any group, format, or holiday goal. All of them preserve the essence of Secret Santa — anonymity and gift-giving — while making the game more diverse and exciting.

Secret Santa challenge.

Before opening the box and finding out what’s inside, the recipient must complete a short task — improvised, with no preparation, and lasting no longer than a minute.

Here are some ideas:

1. Sing a popular Christmas song
2. Share a short anecdote or personal story on a given topic
3. Draw a snowman in 60 seconds
4. Dance or act our something funny.

Solve a puzzle.

The gift box is locked with a small combination lock, and the key to it is hidden in a puzzle or riddle attached to the top. To get the gift, the recipient has to solve the puzzle and figure out the right code.

Mission-based gift exchange.

Before the draw, the organizer assigns a short task, or "mission" to each participant. Examples: “prepare a gift connected to school memories” or “bring something blue.” The result is a set of gifts that are themed, unusual, and completely different from one another. Secret Santas get more room for creativity, and the chance of someone buying a random trinket from a holiday shop drops to zero.

Collective gift.

Instead of separate surprises, participants work together to create one big present for each player. Each Santa adds a small detail that reflects their character or mood. In the end, it could turn into a large collage, a handmade garland, or a gift box filled with small gifts. Everyone sees the result — but no one knows who contributed which part.

Surprise wrapping.

Each Santa wraps their gift in with an unusual material or gives the gift an unexpected shape. It can be a newspaper instead of wrapping paper, shiny foil, a piece of fabric, or a strangely shaped box. The recipient, looking only at the packaging, is guessing what’s inside.

Playing Secret Santa gives everyone room for imagination and a foundation for shared memories. By adding these activities to the classic format, the familiar holiday can turn into a talent show, a theatrical stage, or even a team-building experience.

Try our MySanta app

You can create wishlists, add exclusions, and communicate with your gifree secretly. Moreover, there is an option to track gifts and ensure that everyone buys a present on time.

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