How does secret Santa work?

[chariotsofire]

This might seem a bit late to be asking but DH and I are taking part in a secret Santa tomorrow and the way he thinks it works is different to how I thought it worked.

I had imagined that I would label my present with the name of the recipient but not my own name. DH thinks we don't name them and everyone has to guess who they are from and to.

With DH's method there are a couple of things I don't get- who opens the presents? And how do we guess who it is for when I have bought a pretty generic gift?

Put the recipients name in but not your own.

**on

Thanks he is getting a bit grouchy having to answer my questions as we all have a cold do won't even be there in person anyway.

Well, we buy a generic boy and a generic girl gifts. Then starting from oldest to youngest (just the grown ups) we take turns to pick a parcel from the boy or girl sack. So you don't buy for a specific person and no one knows who bought what. There's enough to go around and each person only has to buy one gift (so DH bought the boy gift and I bought the girl gift in theory but of course we all know I bought and wrapped them both ).