The World's Largest Secret Santa

In the winter of 2010, the world's largest Secret Santa was organized. The website Reddit, a user content driver forum, was the organizer of this even. With over 90 countries participating, this took the Guinness World Record for the largest Secret Santa to ever be organized and carried out. The users were paired with other users based on common interests in the form of subreddits. Subreddits are smaller forums where common interests can be discussed, such as r/trees, r/games, and r/computers&society. Along with this grouping system, each user could submit information about what they were into, and what they are active in. By using this combination of matching, each Secret Santa was able to get an idea of what their giftee wanted and was into. The first year of Secret Santa went smooth, with only a small portion of users not sending gifts to their giftees. This would be fixed in future Secret Santas with the addition of re-gifters, users who volunteer to be matched with users who did not receive a gift, allowing all to enjoy in the festivities.

With the large media coverage on the first year of Secret Santa came fantastic things for future years. In the following years came the signing up of famous celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bear Grylls and even The Bill Gates. As it would be unfair to a lucky few giftees to receive absurd gifts, these celebrities quickly made a pattern of their gifts. For example, Bill Gates made it a tradition to give a reasonably priced gift followed by a large donation based of of his giftee's interests. Several celebrities took up this tradition and ended giving massive donations each year to charity. This show of good will is everything that the Reddit Secret Santa is about.

Above the materialistic top that is giving physical objects to another, the true glory of Reddit Secret Santa is the spirit of giving. The ability to gather thousands of individuals and have them share the spirit of giving with others is what makes technology great. Before the internet, it would be physically impossible to organize the logistics to make an event this large scale work. This event shows the very best of how computers and technology have impacted our society.