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The New York Times has covered Reddit’s increasingly popular Secret Santa program, which is set to kick off later this week on November 25th.
Reddit Gifts- the offshoot of the Secret Santa subreddit– launched earlier this year after the social aggregator realized that the informal gift exchange had become a massive and well-documented effort spanning thousands and thousands of users and several continents. (Which isn’t surprising given the skyrocketing popularity of Reddit in general.) Reddit Gifts has even hinted at some secret celebrity involvement, and Dan McComas (kickme444), who organizes the project, commented to the Times about the lengths to which Redditors will go to select the perfect gift for their Secret Santa:
“A lot of people go way over the top, and spend more on their Secret Santa person than they do on their families… Some people open up their Facebook profiles to the public while it is going on. Others read back through two years of comments on Reddit, where someone is pouring out their heart.”
The program is so popular that it has spawned a second gift giving holiday in June, the Reddit-specific “Arbitrary Day.” McComas spoke about how passionate users get about their Reddit Gifts experience:
“We do worry a lot about overkill… People really want to be givers. They want to see the reaction they get when they give something to a stranger they’ve learned about.”
Interested users (and non-users) can sign up on Reddit’s Secret Santa site.
