The Secret Santa game

The introduction

Hello everyone, I hope that you are all doing just fine!

In this article I want to tell you about this thing, which was kind of created last year and because of its popularity it is made in this year, too, so if you are in Georgia and if you are going to be in Georgia until the end of December, then you should definitely read my article! It’s about the Secret Santa game, which is not just a simple game, because almost the whole country participates in it, I guess. Well, maybe not the whole country, however, there are many people who register for the Secret Santa game and it’s like an official game here now.

So, I guess you have all heard about Secret Santa game already. And for those who doesn’t know about it, I will tell you the rules. The rules are pretty simple. There are people participating in the Secret Santa game. Their names are on some small papers or somewhere else like that and they get to be each other's Secret Santas randomly, so that no one really knows who their Secret Santa is. And each person has to prepare some presents for the one they are Secret Santas of. They must do this secretly, so that they don’t know who gave them the presents. And in the end, when everything ends, they can reveal themselves to the people who they gave the presents to. It’s a pretty exciting game, especially when you know the people participating in the game. However, this game is just not like the usual tradition in one aspect: you don’t know the one that you are going to give the present to, and you don’t know the one who is giving you the present. So that is pretty exciting too, but in a nervous way. I mean, you are anxious about what you will get as a present and if you are getting a present or not.

About the game

Well, the game was created by the Bank of Georgia, which is a pretty popular bank in Georgia and has many clients. It was just last year when they came up with that plan of creating a Secret Santa game of their own and let the people participate in it. You could participate in the Secret Santa game whether you were the Bank of Georgia client or not. You just had to register on their web page and that was all. The game had many participants in a really short time and I remember that, when I was in the post office waiting in a line for my turn, there were so many people there to send their gifts to the addressees that it took me a while until my turn came to take just one thing, that I had ordered from an Internet web page.

Anyways, since the Secret Santa game was such a success last year, the Bank of Georgia decided to do the game this year too, and they renewed their web page for the people to get registered for the game and write their wishes on that page of registration.

The rules of the Secret Santa game

Well, first of all, you have to register in the special web page, where you will become a member of that game community: you will get your Secret Santa and the person you will be Secret Santa of assigned.

This web page is called Secret Santa, when you enter you will be asked to register. They don’t really need too much information about yourself for the registration. You just have to fill in your name, surname, gender and the date of birth. Then, you can write your wish or whatever you want in this small box and it should be maximum 255 characters long, so that you should be very concrete about your wish or whatever you want to tell your Secret Santa.

After that, you just have to fill in the address of your own, so that the post office will know where to deliver your present when your Secret Santa sends you one. And you have to fill in your mobile phone number and that’s very important, because Secret Santa gifts are sent according to the phone numbers. I mean, when you take your present to the post office, you just have to tell them your mobile phone number and they will do the rest, which includes taking your present to the person whom you are assigned to be the Secret Santa of.

After you have done these filling out things, you just have to wait for a confirmation code to be sent to your phone, so that you can finish your registration. You just have to fill that confirmation code in the gap of the web page and click on “Continue” or whatever you see there. And then, that’s it!

Now you just have to wait for the system to find a Secret Santa for you and that other person, whom you will send your gift to. When everything’s settled, you will receive a message, telling you to check the website and sign in and see, what that person wishes this New Year for the Secret Santa to give to him or her. You won’t be able to see the name, but you will see the gender and the age and the city where that person lives in. And you will see the person’s wish, too, of course.

After that, you can start thinking about what you will give that person as a present from you, I mean, the Secret Santa you.

After you are assigned to that person as their Secret Santa, you can buy the gift and go to the Georgian Post right away. However, you should do that before 12 p. m. of the 30th of December.

And you should also know, that the working hours for the Georgian Post are from 9 a. m. to 5 p. m. in working days and from 10 a. m. till 2 p. m. on Saturdays. And since many people want to send gifts because of that Secret Santa game, and since there are also many other people waiting for their orders from online shopping or some parcels from other countries, there are always huge lines in the post offices, so that, you should know, that you might have to wait in line even for an hour or more. Trust me, I’ve been there!

So, when you get your present to the Georgian Post, all you need to tell them is your mobile phone number and that’s it!

People are asking about the registration, if they can register from another country. They should know that they can register from other countries, however, they must have a mobile phone number that is working and the presents are just delivered throughout the country of Georgia and not outside its borders.

You should also know that the gift should be maximum 1 kilogramme and the parameters should not exceed A4 format, which is 300 mm x 210 mm x 100 mm. You can have someone else bring the present to the Georgian Post for you and they will just need the mobile phone number, as I’ve already told you.

The couriers will deliver the presents during 8 working days and if the person is not at home, they will leave a notice, so that this person can go to the nearby post office and take their present.

To tell you the truth, you should be pretty worried whether your Secret Santa will give you something or not, because I know some people who got registered on the web page, they had their Secret Santa assigned and they sent the presents to whom they were Secret Santa of, and, however, they didn’t get any presents from their Secret Santas. Well, I guess they behaved bad during the year. Anyways, they then got some little presents from the Bank of Georgia, telling them that they knew that they didn’t get any presents from their Secret Santas, so the Bank of Georgia was giving them some consolation presents.

Well, that tells me that if your Secret Santa doesn’t love you and doesn’t want to give you any presents, there can always be people who will make your Christmas and New Year a little bit exciting and give you some presents. It’s always a good idea to play a little Secret Santa game, so that the excitement of a present and the person giving you the present can make your days not that monotonous as they use to be.

---

Photo gallery