Mumsnet Christmas Appeal/Secret Santa - your thoughts please?

[JustineMumsnet]

Hi all,

It's that time of year again where we are looking towards Christmas and thinking about the annual Mumsnet Secret Santa.

For those of you who've no clue what we're on about, the Mumsnet Christmas Appeal is an annual (obviously) tradition in which MNers nominate other MNers whom they feel to be particularly deserving of support/reward/love to receive a Secret Santa gift. More about it here - and here's how it works plus some FAQs, too.

As we said, it has a long and honourable history on MN - but some have suggested that now we've got Giving Week we should think about retiring the Secret Santa.

So we thought we'd take this opportunity to ask you, before we launch it as usual, if you'd like us to continue with it. We do love helping with the Secret Santa and the thankyou thread is always a very moving read, but it's quite a mammoth thing to organise and there have been a number of complaints about gifts not arriving and/or a lack of thankyou messages which has put a slight dampener on it in recent years.

In short we're happy to stop if folks think it has run its course - and happy to continue if people still think it's worthwhile.

We'd be very grateful for any and all thoughts. Please do post them here.

I loved it and at a very bleak time in my life I felt lifted. Mumsnet at it's best.

Could you do a MN Xmas giving appeal also?

I did the Secret Santa last year, but wasn't clear who/what I was donating for after all the Tizz Wizz. That's academic, in that someone's Christmas will have been a little brighter for a little gift, but I'm not sure if I will do it again as I was left with mixed feelings about it all.

I also think you put a lot of work, time and effort into helping with organising it, and took a lot of flack. If it's going to run, I think it should run with the attitude "It is what it is" to coin a terrible phrase.

I want to do it, I find it feels more personal donating an actual thing.

I would much prefer to see a Giving Week or similar.

I really think the 'appeal' has lost it's way now, I feel very uncomfortable about the whole thing - and I know I don't have to join in and send a gift,

It must be a huge amount of work for Mumsnet Towers.

I don't think another/moving the new giving week is a good idea as a replacement. I don't think it would raise very much money, in all honesty.

I too would like to see it still run, but perhaps under a different name.

The moaners and nit pickers last year wound me up though.

I have nominated and donated in the past, but felt very uncomfortable with how things went last time, so I'm not sure if I want to do it again this year. Part of that though is because no single poster has stood out as someone I really want to nominate to this year (previously there was someone who really stood out for me, but she has disappeared). It was a truly marvellous thing in principle though and a big thanks to HQ for it.

It's just so complicated, I didn't do it to get thanks, but I couldn't help but get sucked into all those thanks / where's my present threads through sheer curiosity as to whether my gift had arrived. If we could get rid of all of those, including "I've posted / it hasn't arrived" ones and just had to take it as having worked in good faith I would feel happier with it.

If it stays it should be secret. No 'I've been nominated/I've posted a big expensive present/thank you' threads.

The thing is, we could have a Christmas Giving Week, with specifically relevant charities to donate to, for example Refuge , and I'd be more than happy to make a donation at Christmas.

But one of the things about the MN Christmas Giving Thingamy (I hate calling it a Secret Santa and it's not an appeal) is that it's more personal.

So, over the course of the year, for example, you begin to realise from her posts that ImJustAnOrdinaryMumsnetter (I've made that up - I hope there isn't a MNetter called this ) has been having a bit of a shit year. Perhaps she's having trouble with her husband, or maybe work has been awful, or she's been ill. Whatever.

The whole point of the MN CGT is that you can nominate that person who you know, just a little bit, for something that will tell them that someone else on MN is thinking about them. Even if it's the tiniest of gifts, it is, as the saying goes, the thought that counts

I would feel terribly said that just because there are a few miserable, sneery and generally mealy mouthed posters around that the rest of us can't do something for other people on MN who might be having a bit of a shit time.

It's not just posters who are having a shit time who get nominated though.

I thought that was the whole point of it TBH.

No of course it's not. But people who get nominated, for whatever reason, do so because someone knows something about them, which is why I was saying it's more personal.

biwi exactly - the fact of being nominated is wonderful, getting an actual present too is a bonus

I loathe Christmas with passion but the best bit of it last year was making up the Secret Santa gift I sent to a Mnetter who had had a truly shit year & almost certainly an ongoing shit year.

I volunteered my gift to MNHQ & they matched me with the person they thought would be the best recipient & it worked.

I can't tell you how much pleasure it gave me to make up & send the parcel & the thanks I got back in the relevant thread were really the icing on the cake.

I also nominated someone & I don't know if they got a gift or not, I hope so, cos they bloody well deserved one.

I think it is a lovely thing to do and it is truly the spirit of Christmas, and also of the Christian faith (massive atheist here) : to give is better than to receive.

Please don't stop it.

As BIWI said - it's the thought that counts.

And I am really that anyone would nominate themselves - they should be drummed of the forum for that.

I feel that it's a very lovely thing to have secret santa BUT that it has changed dramatically in nature over the years. The whiny whinging last year was vile and must've been so dispiriting for the MNHQ Elves who organised it. One of my Christmas traditons is sitting with a glass of something festive to have a sniffle at the thank you threads. Not only to check that the gift I sent has actually survived the postal service and arrived (one year the recipient was in Canada!!!) but to have a sniffle at the lovliness of mumsnetters and their support for one another. Aaah.

Perhaps it's time for a change. Could MNHQ start a thread about how MN has helped us in 2014. Quotes from that could then be compiled and made into a "festive sniffles at Mumsnetter kindness" type thread which could preface a MN advent calendar with 24 windows supporting 24 causes e.g. Refuge, Women's Aid, Woolly Hugs, etc with encouragement to people to donate in the spirit of paying it forward?

whatever's decided, please let Maryz be in charge of naming the project

Absolutely, exactly what magimedi and BIWI said in their last posts.

Except magi's bit about loathing christmas

I love it. So there. I don't care about thank yous. I just like the idea.

Oh trust bloody christmas traditions to pop up

At the risk of sounding like I'm harping on about 'how it were all green fields here when I were a lass' last year in the run up to Christmas, MN was weird because of the post-PB influx. So lots of new members who nobody 'knew' and potential for misunderstanding much higher, as I can see why it looked cliquey.

I don't think that would apply this year, so I think it's worth doing again. If it just provokes problems (rather than the warm feelings it used to) then perhaps we have to accept that the MN community has changed in this respect. But I'd like to see it tried out.

People nominating themselves is completely against the spirit of it surely.

I am confused about why people are nominated tbh - it seems to have morphed into a semi popularity contest in some parts whilst mostly staying as "little boost" for those who need it for one reason or another. When nominations are made does there have to be a reason for nominating someone?

I agree Miranda - I am just not sure why people are nominated anymore . I nominated someone who I know has a very, very tough life - but of course I wasn't matched up with her. The person I was matched up with was on another thread talking about the very expensive gifts she was buying her children - well, I know she might have had a difficult year & perhaps no one buys her a present but quite honestly if she was spending in excess of £1k on her children (by her admission) I really wonder what my modest box of chocs and £10 M & S voucher really meant to her? .

Maybe the two different parts need to be separated then? You can nominate someone on the basis of need (either financial, emotional or physical/medical - i.e. some kind of hardship) or on the basis of 'she's done something/made a particular contribution to MN/the MN community I'd like to mark/reward'.

So why not state, when you say you want to donate/give a gift, which kind of 'cause' you are happy to give to? Then if you don't want to give something to a 'contributor' you don't have to.

I have to say, though, that the continued assertion that it's some kind of popularity contest is really irksome.