Secret Santa Rules for Family: Households, Kids, Budget
A family Secret Santa works best when nobody draws their own household, children draw children, and each draw has its own budget. Type your households below to set it up.
Put a + between people who live together, so they never draw each other. A name before a colon, such as Smiths:, only labels the household on the sheet.
The draw page keeps one draw at a time on each device. Open the children's draw on a second phone or computer, or finish the adults' draw first: send every link, press Copy all links to keep a copy, then press Start a new exchange and come back here. Nothing you type here is saved or sent.
How to Do Secret Santa With Family
A family draw follows the general rules: everyone draws one name in secret and buys that person one gift. What makes a family different is households, children, and a wide spread of what people can spend. If your family doesn't need the secret and people just need to know who they're buying for, an open family list does that. Otherwise, set it up in this order.
Decide who's in. Adults only, or the children too? New partners? Ask everyone at once, in the family chat or by message, with a date to reply by, and let anyone who'd rather sit out say so privately.
List the households. People who live together already buy for each other, so the draw keeps each household apart. That works only while no household is more than half of the draw; here is why a household can't be more than half the group. In a family of two large households, that limit comes up quickly.
Give the children their own draw. Children buying for children and adults for adults keeps gifts suited to the person, and lets the children's budget be lower. With only two or three children, put them in one draw with everyone instead.
Set a budget for each draw before names are drawn, and tell everyone the same number. For figures, see our budget for family suggestions. A theme the whole family can follow, such as a book or something homemade, gives the youngest and the oldest the same place to start.
Draw and send. The planner above opens each draw on the generator with the households already kept apart, and every person gets a private link, including relatives who live far away.
Agree the day. Christmas Day works if everyone is together; otherwise pick an earlier date and ask anyone who can't come to mail their gift ahead.
What Is the 5 Gift Rule?
The 5 gift rule is a limit some parents set on their own children's Christmas presents: five gifts, one of each kind. In the version Sketchplanations published on December 1, 2024, the five are something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read and something to do. Sketchplanations credits the list to Corinne of the blog Pragmatic Parent, who later added a sixth, “something for my family”, an activity everyone does together. Who first used it is unknown, and versions differ: BUFF's (October 16, 2023) makes the fifth gift “a special gift”.
| Gift | For example |
|---|---|
| Something they want | The toy or game at the top of their list |
| Something they need | New boots, a backpack, a lunch box |
| Something to wear | Pajamas, a hat, a sweater |
| Something to read | A book or a comic series |
| Something to do | A craft kit, a day out, lessons |
It sits alongside a family Secret Santa rather than replacing it. The adults draw names for each other; each parent keeps to the rule for their own children. The children still get a handful of presents, and nobody has to buy for everyone.
What Is the 7 Gift Rule?
The 7 gift rule stretches the same idea to seven presents. BUFF's version (October 16, 2023) lists something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read, something to do, something for me and something for the family. Like the 5 gift rule, it limits how many presents parents buy, not what a Secret Santa spends.
Secret Santa Rules for Family Printable
The sheet takes the households, budgets and date from the planner above, lists who's in, and prints on one page to put on the fridge or send to the family chat as a photo. With the planner empty, it prints with blank lines to fill in by hand.
Family Secret Santa Rules
- Exchange
- Where and when
- Adults' budget
- Children's budget
Who's in
- Everyone in the draw gives one gift and gets one.
- Nobody draws someone from their own household.
- Adults draw adults and children draw children, each with their own budget.
- Keep your person a secret until the exchange.
- Spend close to the budget: not far over, not far under.
- Parents help the children choose, wrap and label their gift.
- Put your person's name on the tag, not yours.
- Can't come? Send your gift ahead, or give it to someone who will be there.
- Presents from parents to their own children are separate from the draw.
Rules sheet from secretsantanamegenerator.com, where you can also draw the names for free.