With Christmas around the corner, many of you are already organizing festive parties with family and friends and some of you even office Christmas parties.  One very popular Christmas party activity is a gift exchange.  This gift exchange has many names around the world such as Secret Santa, Kris Kringle, Pollyanna, Chris Kindle, or Monito Monita.  Whatever you call it, it’s great festive fun!

Traditionally, participants would place their name in a hat, taking turns to draw a name of a person to buy a gift for.  Once each person had an assigned name, they would keep that name a secret.  There is usually a price limit given to the gift exchange.  These days, it is often hard to gather all guests to do a hat draw before the party, especially when your guests live in another country.  We can thank technology for some fun new ways to draw names via the internet.  Now you can each draw a name from the different parts of the world!

Here are some great sites that will help you plan your gift exchange without any hassle!  Happy givings!

Elfster
“Elfster is a free online Secret Santa organizer and social networking platform for gift-giving. Elfster gives time-strapped party planners and gift givers the tools to rediscover the joy of gift giving by organizing a Secret Santa exchange. The Elfster algorithm goes something like this:
Elfster Social Gifting = One Part Wishing + One Part Shopping + One Part Social Networking + One Part Gaming = Tons of Fun”

Evite
“No more pulling names out of a hat. Evite makes your holiday gift exchange game a snap.
Here’s how gift exchange works 1. On the “Plan an Event” page, select an invitation style. When filling in the event details, just specify “Gift Exchange” as the event type. Set up your gift exchange. 2. Once your guests have RSVP’d and chose to participate in the gift exchange, Evite will randomize the guest list and automatically assign names for gift giving via email. 3. Using Evite will ensure that identities remain secret for the gift exchange.”

Secret Gift Exchange
“Our Secret Santa Gift Exchange website offers a modern twist allowing organizers and participants to manage the draw, wish lists and exchange exclusions any time of the year for any gift exchange occasion.
This free secret santa gift exchange web site is available 24 hours a day, every day, all year long.”

Secret Santa
“SecretSanta.com™ is a free, online gift exchange management service. As a unique service with great features, SecretSanta.com is not only dedicated to making gift exchange events very simple to create and manage, but most of all lots of fun! From Secret Santa (aka Kris Kringle) to White Elephant to Yankee Swap, SecretSanta.com eliminates the process of ‘drawing names out of a hat’, automatically matching friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances. The turnkey, user-friendly service helps create your event, sends out customized email invitations and reminders, randomly assigns all members of your gift exchange a secret gift-giver, and even helps users shop for secret recipients.
Just register to create your first SecretSanta.com gift exchange event – it’s FUN!! ”