Let's Be Santa!
Want to play Secret Santa with friends or family? Don't want to share your contact details?
Overview
During lockdown, my friends and I had the need to draw pairs for Secret Santa. If anyone doesn’t know what it’s all about, it’s organising a Santa party where everyone in a group of friends draws another person without revealing the result and gives them a secret gift. We wanted to do it online before the party, but all available solutions required the sharing of contact details (whatsup, email etc).
So I created solution that solved our problem and put it to the drawer. Few years later that has changed and I wanted to share it with you. You can see my 2023 Reddit post where I shared it and 2025 update.
Features
- You create an event with list of participants and share only a secret link
- No accounts, emails, or phone numbers required
- Each participant get a match and can check it one time only, so there’s no cheating
- Completely anonymous and privacy-friendly
- Simple enough for families (all ages), friends, and workplaces
Tech Stack
- Frontend: React + Chakra UI hosted on Vercel
- Backend: free Serverless Function on Vercel
- Database: free Postgres on Supabase
So it is currently a completely free solution. You can give it a try!
Screenshots
Results
Despite almost no updates and no marketing, the website quietly grew. To this day it has generated over 26,000 Secret Santa events and helped 200,000+ participants draw their assignments. Seeing people use it every year (not only for Christmas) gives me a lot of joy — especially since this was originally just a fun experiment during lockdown.
