Secret Santa Generator

The Scenario

Every year our family does a secret Santa exchange. For years we’ve put paper names into a pot and manually drawn names, which required us all to be physically present, often done near my Mom’s birthday in December (which doesn’t give much time to shop). In the age of computers, why are we still doing this stone age paper and pot method??? There definitely is a better way. In search of a solution, I found an AWESOME script written by Maël Nison, who was cheerful enough to gift his script to the world via Github. It is people like Maël Nison who share the passion for open source and it is the open source passion that is the reason my website exists and why I share my projects and work freely. We all benefit and learn from the sharing, and it is the open source way!

The script is simple to use if you want to host a copy of your own on your own web server, just git clone it to a folder on your webserver and you are pretty much good to go! If you just want to use the one I am hosting, just skip ahead a bit. The script has the following advantages:

• Static pages.
• No data “back end”.
• Completely private – no need to share contact information, essential to protect everyone’s privacy.
• Able to generate quality lists and exclude sharing between selected people – ideal if you are using this in a large group or with extended family, and want to prevent re-draws for results in the same family/group unit.
• Output is easily sent to the giver by copying the link targets to an email or SMS.
• Givers easily open the received link sent by the host and a nice card is displayed showing who the gift recipient is.

Make Your Own Secret Santa List

Happy Holidays! Go ahead and click here to generate your own list!

How To Use: Example methods of input:

Joe !Sally
Sally !Joe
Edward !Jen
Jen !Edward
Ben !Grace
Grace !Ben
Kelly !Jeremy
Jeremy !Kelly
Kate

In the above example, we have 1 individual, and 8 couples. We obviously don’t want spouses to exchange gifts with each other, but rather exchange gifts between couples. The above example allows us to exclude the second spouse in the same couple. Note that the couples need to be declared twice in reciprocal order. In the case of cousins whereby each family has anywhere from 1 to multiple kids, we want to prevent exchange between kids in the same family unit, but pair them up with cousins in other families. Here’s how that would look:

Let’s say Family 1 has the following kids: David, Ken, Sue. Family 2 has the following kids: Daniel, Jay, James. Family 3 Has the following: Marshal, Michelle. Family 4 has only one child. The input for pairing between these cousins would look like:

David !Ken !Sue
Ken !David !sue
Sue !Ken !David
Daniel !Jay !James
Jay !Daniel !James
James !Daniel !Jay
Marshal !Michelle
Michelle !Marshal
Sam

Enter your name list in the top right entry box like so:

Once you enter your names just click this button:

You will then see a list of names and unique links (you then copy and share the links with the members of your group privately):

When a secret santa in your group receives their link to discover who they’re giving to, they will see this: (in this case Daniel will click OK to discover the person he’s gifting for)