The Stocking Share

The Christmas season is a time for warmth, caring, giving and sharing. It is also a great time to burn a whole in your pocket, wallet, and bank account. These days, a better option, especially for a young professional with a lot of acquaintance, a better idea than a large gift, or a secret Santa drawing, is a stocking share. A stocking share is kind of like a secret Santa system, and works in pretty much any situation where a secret Santa drawing would come in to play. It is perfect for an office setting, but can also work in a large group of friends or friendly acquaintances.

Basically, it is like this. Everyone in the group has a stocking. In an office setting, it is best to hang the stockings up in a specific place with names on them, and over a certain period of time everyone puts one small thing in everyone else’s stocking. On one specific day, everyone meets to open the stockings and socialize and it is a nice little community building party. It gets everyone more in the Christmas spirit to be able to share the spirit of giving a little bit with everyone.

In a social circle, it is a little bit more complicated The first step is to figure out who is going to be in the stocking share group. Once you have figured that out, you designate a day and time at which you will all meet to swap stockings. It is a great idea to do this as a Christmas party for your close friends. You have a certain amount of time to gather all of the stocking stuffers, and a stocking for yourself. On the day of the stocking swap, everyone meets up at the designated place, and hangs their stockings in a common area. During an hour or so of social time, people put the stocking stuffers in the designated stockings. When that time is up, the group circles up to open their stockings. This is obviously the fun part. You get to be a kid all over again. Do you remember how much fun it was to get lots of little presents instead of one or two ties or movies or other generic gift items?

In terms of what to put in the stockings, you can have lots of fun with this. Places like Target and the Dollar Store are great places to pick up neat little trinkets for cheap. Party stores are also a great place to look for items like that. Online stores can be a great resource too, and companies like Oriental Trading Company have items that you can buy in bulks of anywhere from three to an entire gross (a dozen dozen) to fit any size budget or crowd. On a college student budget with a lot of friends one year, I did virtually all of my Christmas shopping on a similar website. One bill, one package, tons of different gifts. The best part of the stocking share is the variety of different things that you get. Sure beats another pair of socks.