Christmas - Softonic English

Best secret Santa sites

Take your Secret Santa gift exchange to the next level!

Christmas approaches, along with one of our favorite holiday traditions: the Secret Santa gift exchange!

If you’ve never had a Secret Santa party (NOTE: not a white elephant exchange), we recommend it! There’s nothing like picking the perfect gift for a friend, and receiving something awesome in return.

You may wonder: what do Secret Santa Sites add? Why not just put everyone’s names on a piece of paper, have everybody draw, and move on with things? Well, for starters, that’s no fun. Aside from that, these applications help suggest gifts to givers, set dates and send reminders, establish information (like budgets) so everyone’s on the same page, and connect people that are far away. There are too many great reasons!

So, for newbies and veterans alike, please check out the…

Best Secret Santa Sites!

Simple Path: Drawnames

Drawnames gets the job done easily! Head on over to their website:

Creating an Exchange

You don’t even have to create an account yet: just hit the “Start Drawing Names” button, and begin the process! We’ll simplify the first steps…

You need just a few things for the first step: the participant names and their emails:

After that, you’ll find an information page. You aren’t required to create anything other than a name and email message, but we suggest including a date. We set the budget at $500. So far, after years of exchanging, we’ve had no problems…

At this point, you can send the invites! Participants will receive an email asking for confirmation. You can set a deadline, or wait until everyone joins. When the right conditions have been met, the “drawing” begins, and assignments are emailed to each person!

The Pluses

Once the emails go out, you should make an account. This allows you to create a wish list, record your hobbies/likes, and offer gift suggestions (a helpful guide for your gift giver).

Conclusion

We’ve used Drawnames for a number of years, and each time it’s served us amazingly well. The use of emails gets the job done quickly, the user interface appears clean and fresh, suggesting gifts and setting deadlines couldn’t be easier.

As a bonus, you can set gifting restrictions! If a couple is part of your friend group and already planning to gift each other, kindly help them draw another name. If you have an aunt who only gives clothes, make sure she can’t send any more badly-fitted jeans. If you have two coworkers that don’t get along, make sure they receive each other’s names!

Heh.

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Thorough Path: Elfster

Think about that name for a second. Elfster. Doesn’t it make more sense? The elves make the presents all year round, and the party itself is called the Secret Santa exchange. The big man gets all the Christmas credit…

If you’re an “elf,” and enjoy finding a gift as much as the actual exchange party, we love you.

Starting an Exchange

Head on over to the website!

You don’t need to create an account yet: hit the orange button labeled “Secret Santa Generator”! If you do make an account, this icon will become “Start a Gift Exchange”:

Once that’s finished, you’re on a familiar road: put in your email and set a password to create an account. Enter gift exchange information, budget, date, etc. Finally, Elfster finishes with the names and emails: place everyone’s information down, and send out those invites.

Here, you only NEED to set an exchange name and date.

Fin — There it is. Add the people, create the invites.

Once you’re finished, and the names are out, you can create wish lists in preparation for the exchange as usual. Be warned: if you type in a gift, Elfster automatically searches for ideas on Amazon.com. The option for plain text must be selected. (It took us an embarrassing amount of time to figure this out:)

The Pluses

For starters, Elfster takes the options provided by Drawnames the next level! … At the cost of simplicity. Want to set drawing restrictions? You can now use the settings from all previous years, where Drawnames only carries over restrictions from the previous exchange. Want to see other people’s wish lists? Elfster allows you to “Follow” other people, like a social media app! These options can be confusing at first, but with time they become powerful allies.

“With great power comes great responsibility” – Uncle Ben

Final Note

After all that hard work, want to spice up a gift exchange further?

Play the guessing game! Label every gift for the receiver… but don’t write down the sender. When someone receives a gift, they have three guesses to find the giver. Once they’re finished, the giver opens their gift and the cycle continues! Always a good time. 😀

Thanks for reading, enjoy the exchange!

Top 5 apps to help plan your holiday party

Use these great apps to plan a raging fiesta or a quiet gathering with friends.

Parties are one of the best parts of the holiday season. Along with the chance to get together with family and friends and exchange gifts, they’re the perfect excuse to drink until you don’t mind listening to the same 10 Christmas songs all night. If the responsibility of hosting falls on you this year, don’t worry! We’ve got a few apps that can help make the experience a lot less stressful.

Top 5 apps to help plan your holiday party

1. Doodle

As adults, we all have separate lives with responsibilities that make it difficult to meet up with others. Instead of trying to wrangle everyone in a group text or Facebook group where it’s easy to lose track of things, Doodle is an app where you can see who is available on what day.

Start by creating your event. Then, pick a few dates and times for your party that guests can choose from. After that’s all finished, you can send invites by text message, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, email, Twitter, and other methods. Once a participant receives the invite, they’ll select the date that’s best for them without having to download the app.

Your guests’ avaliability will show up in your Doodle page, and you can finalize your date from there. It’s such a relief to not have to contact a lot of people on a lot of different platforms and will really cut down on your workload. Available for iOS and Android.

Doodle: Easy Scheduling Download Free ►

2. Yummly

The most important part of the party is the food, of course! This could also be the most stressful part, but Yummly has you covered. Even after the holiday season, Yummly is a great app to have for day-to-day recipes. The first time you open the app, you’ll be prompted to select your favorite cuisines, enter any food allergies that you have, and foods that you just don’t like. From then on, it curates recipes that it thinks you’ll enjoy. For your holiday party, you can search by holiday and the app will scour the internet for the best Christmas cookie or Thanksgiving turkey recipes.

If you’re on a strict schedule, you can pick certain dishes by how much time you can spend to make them. Save recipes for later in pre-named categories, or make your own. If that isn’t cool enough, Yummly takes it a step further with their “Shopping List” function, where you can add ingredients manually so you’ll know what you need when you head to the grocery store. Available for iOS and Android.

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3. Tasty

If you’re on any social media platform, you’re sure to have crossed a Tasty video or two. Tasty recipe videos are super binge-worthy, not only having classic recipes but also putting new and creative spins on them. Tasty is not only great for food, but their drink selection is probably the most vast and aesthetically pleasing that you’ll see anywhere on the internet. Discover the top recipes that people are searching for today, or look up the specific drink that you’re looking for (five recipes just for eggnog!).

Add your recipes to your shopping list and your app will organize it for you. No more circling the grocery store, going back and forth between aisles for items that you forgot. Tap the ingredients that you have in your cart, and they’ll be crossed out on the list. If a recipe is a success, add it to your “Would Make Again” list so you can easily go back and access your favorites. Available for iOS and Android.

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4. Instacart

Instacart is a lifesaver when it comes to holiday parties. Let’s say that you’ve already spent two hours at the grocery store, and once you’ve dragged all of the heavy bags inside when you get home, you realize you’ve forgotten a key ingredient. Or, maybe you’ve been cleaning all day to prepare for the party and you just don’t feel like grocery shopping at all. Let the awesome shoppers at Instacart do it for you! Just enter your basic info, and select from the available stores around for groceries and alcohol. Add everything you need to your cart, and let the shoppers know if they can substitute an item for another if the one you want isn’t available. Handle your other chores and the groceries arrive at your door!

Instacart is updated constantly, so make sure that you check the coupon page to take advantage of the savings. Available for iOS and Android.

Instacart Grocery Delivery Download Free ►

5. Heads Up!

After all the food has been eaten and everyone’s had a few drinks each, there’s nothing more fun than playing a game with all of your guests. Heads Up! is a hilarious, family-friendly guessing game. Split into two teams and pick a category, from sports teams to blockbuster movies.

With one team playing at a time, a single player is selected who holds their phone against their forehead for their team to see. The team describes the person, place or thing shown on the phone and the winner of the round is the team who had the most correct answers after everyone has played once. For particularly goofy moments, you can watch a video replay of your friends’ crazy charades. New categories are added frequently so it’s no wonder that Heads Up! has been one of the most fun party game apps for the last five years. Available for iOS and Android.

Heads Up! Download Free ►

Now that you have your food, drinks, games, and guests, you’ll all set to have the most epic holiday party of the year. Have fun!

Top 10 Christmas movies to get you into the holiday spirit

Kick back with one of these Christmas classics.

From: Amazon Prime Video

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Of course, any list of Christmas movies is subjective and there are far more classics worth your time. If you’re looking for even more movies to check out, be sure to see the recommendations from our Softonic Solutions community! You can vote on your choices and submit new ones. (We noticed “Die Hard” isn’t listed there, and that is totally a Christmas movie.)