Initiating Secret Santa 4.0

Whether people want to acknowledge it or not, we're now entering the Christmas season, which for the last three years has meant - at least for the blogging community - that Secret Santa season is nearly upon us as well.

In an effort to give everyone an extra week to shop, I've decided to go ahead and launch the fourth annual Secret Santa a week earlier this year.

Last year's gift exchange went over swimmingly, we had 30 participants, no one was stiffed, and to my knowledge, no one was unhappy with their gifts. Since it was my first year as host of the Secret Santa, I couldn't have been more pleased with the results. I know that the blog's have been down a bit this year, so it might be a little difficult to draw 30 people again, but I'm hoping for at least 20 entrants, as it might not be very fun, or even doable, with less.

For those who've participated in the past, nothing has changed, Matt laid down a solid set of rules when he created the SS four years ago, and I see no need to try and reinvent the wheel.

For those who haven't participated in the past, the rules are pretty simple:

- The limit is $10 for the actual gift.  Feel free to add extra trade bait to take full advantage of the envelope.

- Please reveal your identity at some point to the recipient of your gift. This helps me do a nice wrap up post at the end and may help introduce some new trade partners to our community.

See, pretty simple!

There are a few other bits of not so fine print to mention as well, so please read the following items before signing up:

1. Who's eligible to join?: All bloggers are welcome of course, as are all the friends of the blogs (frequent commenters, trade partners, etc.). TCDB members will be welcomed with open arms. People from Twitter will be allowed to join too, although this will be on a case by case basis, meaning that if I've interacted with you, and know that you're not gonna flake out on everyone, then you're good to go -- or if someone else of note can verify the quality of your person, you'll be welcome to join as well. And then of course all former bloggers on Twitter will be encouraged to participate as well.

2. Canada, eh?: If we're lucky, we'll have a few a Canadian participants amongst the Secret Santa field, so keep that in mind. There are cheap methods available when it comes to shipping to Canada, but if this is something that worries you (it shouldn't though), it might be a good idea to sit this one out.

3. Reach out and touch somebody!: This one can't be stressed enough, please send a quick thank you to whoever your Secret Santa was. I realize that life can get sort of busy around this time of year, and maybe you won't be able to get a blog post up, or get a tweet sent out, but you can certainly spare a minute to send off a quick thank you email -- plus it has the extra added benefit of letting your Santa know that the package they sent did arrive at it's intended destination.

4. You must be new around here!: If you haven't participated before, please send me an email (jtef82@gmail.com) with your address, and if you're not a blogger, please also include a link to your TCDB wantlist, or at least give me some sense of what you collect, so that I can pass these things along to your Secret Santa. Also, if you have participated in the past, but are now at a different address, please send an email with your new address.

5. Help!: Last year I asked folks to help spread the word, and you did (thank you again for that), so I'm going to ask for your help in doing so again this year. I hate the thought of someone wanting to join, but missing out because they some how didn't see my posts, or just have never come around here before. I'm not asking for full blog posts here, but if you could just maybe mention it at the end of a post, that would be great, and probably would go a long way towards getting as many participants as possible.

I think that just about covers everything, if I've forgotten anything, or if you have any questions, please let me know in the comment section or via email.

I'll leave the sign-up open for a week (there's going to be plenty of reminders between now and then), so that should give everyone plenty of time to update/add to their wantlists, or if you're like me, give you some time to actually create some wantlists.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.