The "Secret Friend" Trauma

Level 3 - post 9 (week 14) >> THEMED POST 3 

 Write about the national custom of giving presents to random and unknown mates during Christmas. Refer to anecdotes, funny situations, hardtimes finding the present or so.

- The students have to leave comments on at least 3 of their mates' posts  and on their teacher's post. - Wordcount: 190

 

The "Secret Friend" Trauma 

In my country, among all the traditions and cutoms we have, every end of the year, especially in offices and workplaces, people celebrate something we call "The Secret Friend". This is a way of giving presents to each other, without promoting preferences nor considering the rivalry that may exist within the team, it means just to give a present to someone who doesn't know who will be giving them the present.  

The tradition works like this: 

Firstly, one person (most of time the leader of the team) makes little papers with all the names of the people who compose the team. Then, every person gets, at random, one of the little pieces of paper with someone's name and mustn't tell anybody about who's name they got. The person whose name was in the paper is secret (that's why the 'secret friend') and everybody has to buy a present for the person they got.

Most of time, the team schedules a day and a time to give each other the presents, and also they get some biscuits and nice things to make a 'little Christmas' celebration because this instance takes place just before Christmas day, also, in many places, the prices for the gifts are set according to everybody's opinion, i.e. the present you buy must be worth a certain ammount, not usually more than five thousand chilean pesos.

In my life, I haven't played this game many times because it is very unusual that I have to work in a team and it is because the job of a university teacher, although not quite coherent with my teaching standpoint, is quite lonesome and though you work with many people, you don't have colleagues like people working in an office.  

I have tried to play it with some of my students from certain courses, but to be honest, I only want to give everybody a present and in the end, as obvious, I end up giving away small presents to everybody, and finally, that is not a proper 'Amigo Secreto'  game. Maybe in the future I will do it, but by now, I feel quite happy without having to over think a present for someone I don't really know.