By Ingrid Yeung ’23
Every year during the Christmas season, St. Mark’s holds many festive activities for the students and faculty to celebrate before winter break. One long standing tradition is Secret Santa. Students and faculty are assigned a peer to give small gifts to secretly for a week, writing letters, sending gifts, or doing other little things to show their appreciation to each other anonymously. This year, however, was a little different. With the complicated situation in the world right now, St. Markers are spread over different continents and time zones. The usual secret Santa activity seemed impossible.
The Monitors didn’t simply give up on the event, though. They came up with a brand-new version of the secret Santa: the Not-so-secret-Santa. Instead of sending gifts anonymously, students and faculty interested in this activity would sign up to participate remotely. The monitors paired everyone up so that they could contact each other through email. Throughout the week, there were many prompts emailed out in order for people to send short, appreciative emails to each other. Ranging from your favorite holiday to sending holiday pictures to each other, the Not-so-secret-Santa allowed St. Marker’s to bond and show gratitude at the end of the year, even during the pandemic.
Lily, one of the head monitors, provided us with some more information on how the monitors came up with this idea as well as her own experience doing the not-so-secret-Santa.
Can you tell us a little bit about your thoughts on this program?
“It was definitely a struggle finding a way to do secret Santa, which is a very fun tradition at our school, and the premise itself is anonymous gifting, online. We wanted to do it, but gift exchange online simply isn’t the same, and anonymity is not quite possible unless we used a third-party platform.”
How did you come up with this idea?
“When we were brainstorming in our meeting, we came to the conclusion that we should do the not-so-secret Santa because we wanted the community aspect without any safety risks or online issues. We liked the idea of smaller gifts (like messages) and sharing little stories, so to facilitate a connection between people, we just paired people up. Doing this event online is a bit more complicated and gifts aren’t really as good virtually; thus, we decided to send out prompts that would create some form of connection or sharing over the week. This event was undoubtedly a group effort, and personally, I think it went as well as it can be online.“
Was there any interesting experience that you had?
“In general, I had a very good experience. I was paired with Dr. Kress and we talked much more than I expected. We shared a lot of heartwarming stories, and since she is new faculty, I felt like I got to know her better. The week was very fun since everyone there’s something new to look forward to.”
Many students and faculties participated in the not-so-secret-Santa. Through this online activity, many of us were able to get in touch with someone we were not familiar with, either a teacher whose class we had never been in or a student in another grade that we barely see in school. Though there were no surprising gifts every day like before, the little messages and support were what people need during this particular Christmas season.