Christmas in July!!!!
Sorry, though, as I write this ... not drunk. Not even one bit.
Sorry, though, as I write this ... not drunk. Not even one bit.
Anyway!
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Reddit Gift's second largest Secret Santa exchange (behind true Christmas / December) is "Arbitrary Day". Commonly know as Christmas in July, Arbitrary is one of the biggest and most anticipated straw pull exchanges they have.
I've mostly enjoyed my experience on Reddit Gifts, so I decided to celebrate this turning point of summer by throwing in for Arbitrary Day. Trying something different this time, I changed my gifting approach in two ways to see what would happen:
(1) My Received Gift
Usually I specifically ask for something kid friendly for my son.
I don't really do Reddit Gifts in the hopes that I get something amazing, and being that the minimum spend is $20, it's a lot easier to wow a kid with that budget than an adult. So filling out my profile with a "in lieu of me, gift to my son" request just seems to ... make sense.
But Arbitrary Day is more of a wild card, so I wanted to give my Santa a wide berth. I won't post my entire profile here, but in a nutshell I said:
"... being that the Arbitrary gift exchange is wide open … I’m going to leave your options wide open as well. Mostly, I’m just curious to see when I supply a lot of info, what surprise I get! You can send something just for my son, or send something just for me … do whatever moves you … I’m simply giving lots to go from so you can draw on any of point for inspiration ... SURPRISE ME!"
(2) My Sent Gift
In exchanges past, I've planned my gifting such that I could send a nice gift to my assigned partner and also opt-in to do one "rematch" gift. (A rematch is essentially an angel gift, where I get nothing, but I fill in for someone else who didn't get a gift via their originally assigned partner.)
Again, I don't do Reddit Gifts with the goal of ME getting something, so singing up as an angel of sorts just kind of made me feel good.
However, after a handful of exchanges, I've learned that singing up to rematch has it's pitfalls ... mostly in the area of lack of appreciation. To make matters worse, I even received some backlash from rematch people who were mad about being shafted from their original partner and took that out on me. While I can table some of those issues and move on, after a 50/50 successful thank you rate (receivers are supposed to take photos and post a thank you note on Reddit Gifts as per the requirements of the exchange), I began to feel like receivers of rematch gifts weren't helping me celebrate the spirit of the exchange.
So for Arbitrary Day, I decided to take a rematch break and instead put all of efforts into one really nice gift to my assigned partner.
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With the above two changes - my wide open profile, and my intention to do one REALLY AWESOME gift this go round, I clicked "sign up" and eagerly awaited my match.
Finally, my match details came through:
Since I'm not a "geek" in the Reddit sense (I know almost nothing about SciFi in general), I drew my gift inspiration from a few favorites on my partner's Amazon Wishlist and our "mom" connection.
The gift ended up being a matching cross body bag and backpack in the giftee's favorite color, a cosmetic zipper case filled with face masks (and a headband to keep hair back during said face mask), a brush to apply the face masks, a pair of Betsy Johnson owl earrings, and a blackwork style Tardis cross stitch ... of course, that part handmade by me.
Since a gift from me without some sort of fancy wrapping is unheard of, I wrapped the smaller portions ala the color pallet from my previous gift ... which translated well to this partner as well.
And then I posted a sneak peek photo on Reddit for the world to admire.
This receiver's thank you was easily the fastest and most truly grateful response I've ever had, which was so gratifying after all the downer rematch experiences I've had. Hooray!
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About a week after my sending end of the exchange was complete, I received an email that my gift had shipped. Curious to see what would happen, I anxiously awaited an Amazon package to my door.
Dinosaurs and Toy Story - the perfect match for my three year old!
And that's how my Arbitrary Day gift exchange shaped up. Now I await the next batch of exchanges ... a Halloween themed one, perhaps?!
Dinosaurs and Toy Story - the perfect match for my three year old!
And that's how my Arbitrary Day gift exchange shaped up. Now I await the next batch of exchanges ... a Halloween themed one, perhaps?!
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