Secret Santa - to do or not to do?

I think you need to stick with your beliefs L.Ravenscroft charities are going to be really struggling this year so I would give the money to the rescue centre.
Maybe you could make some cakes for your group instead or a jar of hone made chutney.

You could give a card saying I have donated £10 in your name to whatever charity. Alternatively why not speak to your group and see what they all want. Maybe you could all club together and choose a different charity to give to each year.

Does your Secret Santa mean you buy a gift for each person? With ours we each buy one gift, put them all in a box, put a cloth over the top and then draw out one each (without looking!).
£10 each that way rather than £100 - certainly wouldn't be spending that this year or any year.

Could you have a look around charity shops for jewelry? Or as special edibles as Sodapop suggests above.

Or you could request that any gifts from the group to you are as cash in a card as you would like to donate the total amount to a charity of your choice?

25Avalon

You could give a card saying I have donated £10 in your name to whatever charity. Alternatively why not speak to your group and see what they all want. Maybe you could all club together and choose a different charity to give to each year.

If it’s supposed to be a gift then I’m not sure about telling someone it’s been donated to a named charity.

I mean there’s one that gets a lot of donations that I wouldn’t give the dirt off my shoes😱😡

A slap in the face to find my “gift” was going to something I don’t support. Cue crosspatch😬

Don’t do it if you don’t want to, but you don’t get a gift either. This might sound obvious but I was in a group where one person didn’t buy on principle but did expect an extra one supplied for her🤔

Oh wow. It didn’t occur to me you meant £10 for each of them😱

We did that Lixy at a group I used to belong to, except we drew raffle tickets to match the one on the box. Some presents were really nice and others were rubbish. I always seemed to get rubbish ones which was a bit miffing as I always gave something decent!

I agree Lathyrus. It always seemed a strange idea to me that someone would say ‘I’ve donated money to a donkey sanctuary (or whatever) as YOUR Christmas present’!
😁

That’s the first time I’ve heard of a Secret Santa arrangement where you buy for everyone in the group. I thought the point of it was so everyone received a gift but each participant only bought one gift.

I’d maybe suggest doing it that way this year and anyone who is in a financial position to donate the saving of £90 to charity can do so. There may be a few in the group who are feeling the pinch this winter and will be relieved at your suggestion.

Surely Secret Santa involves buying only one gift?
On the one hand, that is only £10 and you could buy it from one of the charities you support, or your “Secret Santa” gift could be a £10 donation to a charity of the recipients choice.

At our WI Christmas party we have a Secret Santa. Anyone who would like to buys ONE gift up to a certain amount of money. These are all put in a box and those who have put in a gift takes another out. Those ladies who haven’t put anything in, don’t take anything out! Simple.

Our Walking Netball group is having a Secret Santa with a limit of £5 to be spent in a charity shop. You could do that LRavenscroft.

I must sound a Scrooge, but don’t think that adults in this type of group or club need to be exchanging gifts really.

Just because you’ve done it for years doesn’t mean it has to carry on.

What on earth do you get them? Chocolates, toiletries, charity shop articles that they probably don’t want, and end up back in the charity shop?

It’s a bit late for this year, but think it’s something to be brought up early next year maybe.

I think that giving a donation in their name to something is not acceptable.

A lot of charities do suggest you purchase a ‘gift’ and they send a card to the person you are giving for. I can’t remember it’s name but one gave to African villages. You could buy seeds, trees, etc depending how much you want to spend. A lot of GNetters seem not to like this idea.

rippleeffect.org/

I sometimes buy from here for my grandsons.

Surely the idea of secret Santa is that one gift is bought by each person then it's lucky dip. I would suggest this to the group. I'm sure that there's others who think the same. In any event you do need to say that you are not participating this year.

I understood a secret Santa to mean everyone picked a name out of a hat and brought one present anonymously. Buying ten presents sounds excessive and I think you should raise the matter for discussion in the group.
Your second point about making a donation in lieu to your favourite charity I don't support; it is imposing your charitable beliefs on other people. Better to say you don't wish to receive a gift this year but if people still wanted to give, you would be pleased if they made a donation, amount unspecified, to a charity of their choice.

So every year you’ve been receiving 9 small gifts from the others? That does seem excessive and a possibly a waste. I would not be surprised if some members think ahead and built up with buy one get one free biscuits or shower gel or something throughout the year. For now if it were me I’d do as others have said and suggest it starts working like secret Santa usually works and everyone agree to absolute max £10 for one recipient - after all it’s nice to give and for some might be one small thing to look forward to.

I agree that SS is usually one gift per person - it's not very secret otherwise .

I think a more sensible gesture would be to ask if people would make their gift to you a donation, not for you to opt them in, so to speak. I am in a SS with an online group I belong to, and was surprised to find how many people there are for whom the SS gift is the only one they get. It seems presumptuous to tell people that this gift is going to be donated to a charity of your choice whether they like it or not.

If you no longer want to take part (which is understandable if you are having to buy 9 gifts!) then I think you should say so now, so that people haven't already spent money on your gift and potentially wasted it. Alternatively, you could suggest that everyone buys one gift which means that you all buy and receive one as opposed to nine. It can either be a lucky dip or someone can organise things so that you buy for a named person so that you can get something you know they will like.

All the Secret Santas I've ever taken part in have involved buying one gift only for one person whose name you have been assigned.

Are you sure that this particular SS involves buying a gift for everybody? That would be unusual and unreasonable.

Sincerest apologies, Everyone! It suddenly occurred to me after I had posted that the bit about £10 was misleading. It is indeed £10 for one person in the group, not £10 for each person. I wouldn't be broke! Thank you for all your replies. They are very much appreciated.

I took part in a Secret Santa last Christmas. The brief was to spend £2........yes, I know, rather frugal to say the least.
Anyway, I selected a lovely unisex gift that was actually marked down from a fiver, so a real bargain. We had been asked to wrap the gifts and mark them 'male', 'female', or 'unisex'.
When it was my turn to choose a gift from the pile of female gifts I was so disappointed to open it and discover that it was a cheap and nasty bottle of mens aftershave that I had seen on sale for 99p!
NEVER AGAIN!!!

Stick to your beliefs OP and do yourself a favour (and the rest of the group) by saying so as early as possible so that you can nip any present-buying a nip in the bud, as it were, and no-one wastes money by getting something for you.

Oh spend your £10 and join in it’s a bit of fun after all
Our group has a £5 ceiling which is nothing it’s only once a year Our charity shop sells lots of things (new and unwanted or new and regifted) for a fiver or under I d be annoyed if I got a card to say I d just donated to something I didn’t agree with or wasn’t interested in and it will set you apart to say I don’t want to join in
That’s what I d do anyway