12 Days of Underconsumption is a special series from one5c laying out everything you need to know to celebrate more sustainably.
12 Days of Underconsumption is a special series from one5c laying out everything you need to know to celebrate more sustainably.
Whinging about the holiday season as a commercial enterprise may have real “old man yells at cloud” energy, but even the grinch-iest among us will have a hard time avoiding gifting entirely. That’s not license to cannonball into a wave of Amazon flotsam for the sake of buying something for everyone. More than half of Americans report receiving stuff they’re not jazzed about, and around 12% of that unwanted stuff will wind up as landfill. The antidote? Fewer, better gifts.
Convincing tykes that one thoughtful present is better than a Hatchimal or MrBeast-branded whatever from every auntie and uncle is a tough sell. Adults? Adults are easier to enlist in a Secret Santa–style exchange to help ease that overconsumption ick.
For a seemingly uncomplicated idea, running a Secret Santa can feel like an exercise in advanced accounting—particularly if you’re dealing with a large, far-flung group or are tossing the same names in the hat every year. As with every tradition, abstract concept, or vague notion in our contemporary era, there is indeed an app for your name-scrambling needs. Dozens, in fact. We checked out 20 of the top offerings to narrow down the best tools for setting up your mystery gift exchange.
The best overall: DrawNames
Available on: Android, iOS, web
DrawNames strikes the balance between simplicity and convenience. There’s no login to get started (even if you drew the short straw and are the organizer) and joyfully no shopping links hitting you in the face. It gets right to the Santa-assigning business and has all the list-management features an organizer needs, like establishing spending limits and setting up exclusions to avoid certain gifter-giftee pairings—say, couples picking each other. Once you’ve set up your exchange, just add an email address or phone number for each of your fellow Santas, and the app will run the drawing and message them. They won’t even need to create a login to see who they picked. If you or your gifting compatriots choose to make accounts, the tool includes a wish list function that connects with Amazon and Walmart, which, though comprehensive, isn’t as flexible as what you can do in other tools.
The best for perennial groups: Elfster
Available on: Android, iOS, web
You and any Secret Santa crew will need to create Elfster accounts to use the service, but that little bit of friction at the beginning extends its utility beyond the holiday season. It ticks all the exchange-management boxes—like blocking certain folks from picking one another, creating wish lists, and group messaging—but Elfster also helps recurring groups of gift givers stay on top of things all year. Because its wish list feature works with a range of sites, from Amazon to Etsy, it serves as a detailed registry for what each person’s asked for, given, and received. A birthday logging function makes it easy to remember any annual milestones, and the app also lets parents build and manage their kids’ lists within its Family Manager feature.
The best no-frills: Santa’s Secret Keeper
Available on: Android, iOS
If all you want is some basic name-assigning and organizational help, Santa’s Secret Keeper delivers like Rudolph on Christmas Eve. This app is as bare-bones as this flavor of digital organizers comes. It simply scrambles up a list of gifter/giftee assignments—no wish lists, no shopping, no logins. Just enter a list of email addresses, and the app will notify your gifting crew. As the administrator, you can see who’s opened their email assignment, resend missed pings, peek at the master list of name matches, and even reset the whole thing if everything goes to pot. You can manage multiple gift exchange groups within the app, set spending limits, and even add a brief note that goes out when names are drawn.