It’s that time of year again, the time where your most festive workmate is starting to organise the office Secret Santa. The time old tradition of pulling the name of your colleague that you know nothing about, then just giving up and buying them a candle is about to start again for another year.
The whole thing is always more stressful that it needs to be, and I was pretty stoked this morning to find out that I’m not the only one who feels like this.
Somebody went to the lengths of conducting a study about how millennials are increasingly seeing the annual Secret Santa as more of a source of anxiety rather than Christmas cheer.
We’re scared of being judged for being too stingy, which is a pretty legit concern seeing as we’re broke af and literally everyone has more money than us. Because of this concern, 26% of millennials were spending more than they could afford on gifts for their coworkers, and even then 17% still felt judged for the amount of money they spent.
Then of course there’s worrying about whether or not the person will actually like their present.
Psychologists are actually on board with this too. Dr Ashley Weinberg, a psychology lecturer at the University of Salford, has said that “it’s worth remembering that where this involves financial contributions, not all colleagues have the same disposable income.”
The good news is that she reckons that there’s a dead simple solution to this – spending limits. Whack a $5, $10, or $15 spending limit on the Secret Santa for the year, and this will take away a lot of the pressure to match the amount of money spent by your boss who drives a super fancy car.
We’re all anxious wrecks, we know that. If you think that the worst part of the silly season is the annual Secret Santa, rest easy in the knowledge that you’re definitely not alone.