What’s Not To Love About A Techy Kris Kindle?

The countdown’s begun. Even if you ‘re still delaying tuning into Christmas FM or buying the first new decoration for a few more days, you probably know where you’ll be having Christmas dinner and with whom, which means there’s some admin to tackle… starting the What’sApp group and assigning the Kris Kindle names for starters. And that’s just the family part. Office KKs are a whole other organisational challenge.

In both cases, it can all get a bit political. Sure, people can’t even agree what to call it- Kris Kindle? Kris Kringle? Secret Santa? And who’s in charge? At times you can’t help but suspect that the designated master elf has their own agenda. It can’t be a coincidence that the person everyone knows is the best giver ends up having them (or that they get someone perfectly suited to some specific item you know they already had). Or for that matter that certain people, like say two family members who aren’t getting along, are suddenly bound to acknowledge one another. Everyone’s also witnessed office pairings that must have been deliberately designed to enable certain Scrooges to send passive aggressive symbolic messages through their ‘gifts’- you know, the classic scented-soap-for-the-person-with-hygiene-issues move.

This is one rite that’s best disrupted by a neutral piece of tech. Luckily, there are loads of free KK platforms that run the gamut from simple match-ups to ones that go a step further with instant click and buy options. Having trawled through them, our choice is a relatively low-tech, not very pretty platform called Sneaky Santa. It’s simplicity is a plus- anyone can set it up-  but it has just enough scope for the odd rule.

Once someone enters everyone’s emails, Sneaky randomly assigns givers and receivers and sends out an email to each with whatever the chosen guidelines are (price, date, etc). You can even stipulate parameters like no one with the same last name can pair up. For some inexplicable reason, when your match message lands in the inbox (the second everyone registers), it’s all a bit of a thrill. And guaranteed fair.