Secret Santa for family

GlasweJen

I've got a massive family, 4 siblings plus partners plus cousins who are treated like siblings plus grandparents, parents, nieces and nephews. For my side of the family alone I bought gifts for 31 adults and 3 kids last year :eek::eek:

This year my sister got married and I bought her wedding cake which was £600+ (sounds expensive but think of how many people she had to feed, you can only imagine the size of my extended family), OH and I took 2 of our nieces down to London to see the Harry Potter studios and all the London sights and that cost about £300 for the weekend. We are planning on taking the little one to a light house (she's obsessed with them) in the autumn and we don't expect that to come cheap either.

It's been an expensive year for everyone but my mum loves Christmas so no one has ever suggested cutting back.

Well on Sunday I suggested that we keep buying for the kids but instead of them getting gifts from everyone we all club in so that they can get bigger gifts like a bike or a tablet for the older one. For the adults we all get assigned one person and that's the person we give a gift to.

Now it's hard to get away from the idea of buying mum a gift because she's my mum, I'm sure mum will find it hard to not buy us all gifts but she can't afford it really as the wedding was really a stretch and they want to contribute to my wedding too (we've refused but it upset my mum so we've asked her to just put in what she wants). We told mum that instead of all the presents we can all go to the panto together or out for nice lunches/days to Edinburgh but really we wont ever spend as much on days out as we did on Christmas.

We expected it to go down like a tonne of bricks but she loved the idea and she's already started organising the draw and coming up with the rules like the cap on spending. She's even phoned me to ask if we can use my theatre membership card to book the panto on a discount!

I'm amazed but I hope it lasts until Christmas.

Victoriaevans999

Hi

I have a similar sized family so a couple of years ago we suggested that the siblings and their partners do a secret Santa. It's five couples we all go into a hat and every couple gets a name to buy for up to a limit of £20. The kids still get gifts as do our parents.
It's a great stress relief. ��⛄️