Just caught up on the 'Secret Santa' greed fest. Wtf was that all about?! Are they really that desperate for vlog content?
They clearly don't understand what secret santa is. If it's to be done before Christmas, in an group such as work colleagues or course mates etc, it's a token gift (usually £5, definitely no more than £10), often with a theme. If done in families, especially large ones like theirs, it's usually in place of presents for all, due to the expensive nature of buying for everyone in a large family. Granted the budget is much higher, and presents more serious/catered for that person, but that's because that's all that person is getting that year from family. And, by nature of the experience (only gifts they're getting from family), they tend to be opened on Christmas day itself.
There's absolutely no point spending the extortionate amount they did on each other, shopping en mass during a pandemic, opening them a week or so before Christmas, only to repeat the process again on Friday when they all receive a massive stash of presents each (not to mention the Christmas Eve
tit that'll come before). It's total indulgence. Loads of new clothes for secret Santa? 5 or 6 new toys for a 3 year old (Archie), just a week before Christmas? (That he just threw on the floor anyway).
Then they revealed who they bought for anyway straight afterwards. It's called SECRET Santa you morons!
![See-no-evil monkey :see_no_evil: 🙈](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/joypixels/emoji-assets@5.0/png/64/1f648.png)
(I know many struggle to keep it secret anyway, so it might leak out, but I've never seen people sit around straight after opening and literally reveal one by one who they bought for. What was the point in that?!
With so many little ones involved, it's was mainly just the adults/older kids buying multiple presents anyway, saying it's from whoever, when the under 5s clearly couldn't give a
tit.
What about the older boys? I get them not wanting to be on camera but it seemed like the rules of this secret Santa were you could only take part and buy and receive a present if you open it on camera. No mention of anyone buying for, or receiving from Josh, James, Luke, Jack, Daniel etc. Unless they did their own, off screen, secret Santa between themselves?
The whole thing was just pure indulgent crap. You can tell they're also not use to buying for each other as the middle ones (Max, Tillie, Oscar, Casper etc) seemed to find it a really novel experience actually going out and choosing a gift for someone, which is quite sad if they've got to that age without having experienced the joy of picking out a gift for someone before. They're clearly just use to a massive stash of birthday and Christmas presents from mum and dad (or everyone), rather than receiving presents from each other. In the future, it might be a nice tradition to keep, to get them involved in the giving side of Christmas and thinking about a specific sibling and what they might like, but the budget was way too high and it seemed a bit odd (to me) to include the tiny ones who are too young to shop themselves and will get plenty on the day anyway. If it was up to me, I'd make it an age 7 and up thing you do once the little ones are in bed. Just seemed really pointless including them when they had no concept of how to take part properly and needed other people to do the shopping for them. Then, if done off camera later in the evening, it could have included all the older ones, rather than just those who want to be on camera, to make it a true family tradition. It was clearly just for vlog content and, of course, the tiny ones were always going to take priority over the older lads.