It’s time of Secret Santa in many companies again! Not here in Korea where I live now, but we had it back in Sweden. That made me think, what was the most elaborate or cool gift you either gave or got from Secret Santa?

We had a max cap on about $10 (that was 10 years ago). What I did was I bought beef for $10 about a week before the Secret Santa event. I dry curred it (similar to what I did here https://jeena.net/air-dried-ham ), then I packaged it into a plastic bag and that was the present.

The person who got it was terrified, because they had no idea what it was. Everyone else had a key chain or some small gadget, etc. Because it was Secret Santa there was no way for me to explain what it is, with one exception, if this gift was voted the best gift of all of them (we were about 25 people), then this Secret Santa would be relieved and would get a $100 gift card as a price.

Luckily for me this present actually won because it was so different from anything else and I was able to explain that I bought the meat for $10 and then curred it without spending more money than allowed, and by doing so the worth of the present grew significantly over $10 and that this was my goal.

The guy then cut up half of the meat so that everyone could have a bite and try it and took the rest home to his family with him.

How about you?