Secret Santa

[whoopsfallenoveragain]

Has anyone got any alternative ideas to secret santa as we do it at work and I'm fed up of the usual oh I wanted to buy for her not her etc
( I wish we didn't have to do it though!)

One of my old jobs did a complicated one. Everyone had to bring in pictures of them as children. Everyone got assigned a child picture, with no idea of who they were actually buying for. Then you'd buy something for the child in the picture, which the recipient could keep, or give up to a previously chosen charity.

Worked pretty well, only I drew someone who had kids, so kept his gift rather than giving it to charity.

Still, made it more interesting, and the charity angle is nice.

When I worked we were told to buy for a man or woman...Obviously whoever arranged it knew how many men/women there were so each person was allocated a number and male or female. We then had £5 to spend and the gifts were brought in as usual.
On the day the gifts were given out in front of everyone. Each number related to a person in the office so noone was without.The only problem was that most women wanted to buy for women as we are easier..!!!

Does it make sense..??? This was noone knew who they were buying fro and it was kept a secret until the day..before, when we knew who we were buying for it was all to easy to say "oh yeah..shhh, but I'm buying for x."

Shhhh - I thought of doing something like that as I like the idea of secret santa being secret and not being able to ask anyone for help!
I don't know how well it would go down in our place though plus we only have one bloke in the office unless everyone bought something unisex!!