Secret Santa for Dummies: Slay at the Office this Christmas! 🎁

Ho Ho Ho or welcome to your Christmas guide series brought to you by your one and only team Picta! Together this holiday season we’re going to explore every nook and cranny of the gift universe to avoid any panic and allow you to enjoy your December. The weeks leading to Christmas are undoubtedly the best moment of the year: unctuous hot cocoa in the evenings, sugar cookies that melt in your mouth, decorating the tree in the most grandiose of ways, doodling holly in all the corners of your notebook pages, and so much more. We could go on and on in listing all that Christmas has to offer, but for lack of space (and in order to canalize our enthusiasm that is rising faster than boiling milk as we speak) we are going to jump into this article.

Today, we’re focusing on a dreaded Christmas event: the yearly Secret Santa at the office. I mean come on, we’re not all lucky and working with people we bond with and like (team Picta is pretty much unique in that regard but we don’t want to make you jealous🤭)! How are you meant to gift something to Avery who hasn’t spoken two words to you in the past two years? And to Richard who’s twice your age and shares about as much with you as you do with a pine needle? It seems sometimes that Secret Santa was invented by an overly cynical boss who enjoyed watching his employees struggle throughout the holiday season… But you know what?

Here at Picta we firmly believe that anything Christmas-related is meant to be fun and wholesome, so we’ve come up with your go-to Secret Santa guide to help Christmas 2025 go as smoothly as possible! If your goal is to be known as your team’s best gift giver, then follow along for the rest of this blog post!

Do you Want to Rock Secret Santa This Year? You’ve Come to the Right Place Girl!

A few Secret Santa ins and outs to Make Sure we’re on the Same Page

Origins: Well… To be entirely truthful, it’s not very clear. It is believed that the tradition was born in the US in the 20th century but we’ll leave it at that because the details are reeeeally scarce on the exact storyline (and to be entirely honest we don’t need to know more)!

Rules: We’re not going to make it complicated because it is SO simple (probably the least complicated thing you’ll ever get to do at the office). A group of people - yes, this is most often a work thing, don’t ask us why - decide to give presents to each other on a randomized basis with each person assigned to another. Your task will be to have a gift ready for your assigned colleague on the decided deadline. It might seem scary but we’re going to help you get your Santa hat on and jump headfirst into Christmas spirit!

Careful! Don’t mix up Secret Santa with White Elephant! They are similar gift-giving traditions (sometimes unwillingly imposed on us when the holidays come around…) but White Elephant is more complex and time-consuming. If this is what is planned this year at the office, you guys either LOVE each other or management is in a bad mood… (just kidding, White Elephant can be such a fun game to play as well if you embrace the vibes of the season!) 🎄

Saving the day With the Best Secret Santa Gift Ideas!

Our key tip for the easiest Secret Santa gifts? Photo-based products! We see you over there with your mind running wild with an array of inquiries: “But what pictures?”, “I don’t have any photos with these people!”, “Huh? They certainly don’t want a pic of me hanging on their wall…” Stop panicking, of course the pictures are not going to be of you and them (even at Picta we don’t have pics with everyone at the office)!

The trick is to find one thing that the person likes (we eat with them every day at lunch so trust me when I say that it’s pretty doable😉) and use it as the base for the pics in your gift! Avery keeps going on and on about her cat, how adorable the little devil has become, and how much of a cat person she is? There you go, find the cutest kitty photo on Pinterest and gift her a personalized cat magnet!

Richard loves golf? He chats with the whole table at lunch with the tales of his chips and draws without anyone knowing what he’s talking about? You got it girl, find some aesthetic golf-themed photos and print them in mini format to put on his desk! And have you heard? With your Picta app, you can get these presents in less than an hour! This is perfect if you forget about Secret Santa day and have to rush to Walgreens at lunchtime to avoid the wrath of your office!

To make it even easier for you, here is the list of the best photo-based presents that will have you win best Secret Santa with your colleagues this year:

• Posters: a full-blown version of their favorite hobby, animal, or celebrity? Hell yes! How could that not be a BIG win!
• Magnets: they are cute, tiny, and probably the easiest gift out there. You can’t go wrong with a magnet: not personal enough to risk being a total fail but cool enough that anyone would be happy to receive one (especially a fancy personalized Picta one!)

• Wallet Prints: anything in a mini is a guaranteed success, am I right girls? There’s just something with a mini format that makes the product instantly 10 times more attractive. We promise you, you’ll win the heart of your co-worker with those mini prints they can display everywhere!
• Retro Prints: a vintage twist on the mini print because Polaroid-style pictures are just SO aesthetic and trendy at the moment! Any corporate girly out there would be thrilled to be gifted some cute Retro Prints to decorate her desk!