This is a first! Santa is speechless.... so speechless that he could not even post on this thread last evening!
I want to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the special "Secret Santa" community for the wonderful gift I received last evening.
Santa's elves kept a very good secret as did Santa's partner.
While keeping secrets can be naughty and get you on Santa's Bad List, it is more than offset by the selfless generosity of many of you.
As most of you now know a certain Elf named Nancy - or IleftmyheartinTexas - took it upon herself to organize an effort to recognize Santa. What make this more amazing... she was the last person to join our Secret Santa extravaganza... after the deadline... but I was able to find her a Santa.... guess that was a great decision on my part.
My partner had strict orders to take photographs of the "blessed event" of my opening the packages last evening. You can find the pictures at the following link if you care to see them:
Santa's Surprise
Just to give you a breakdown of what was in the package....
- Lots of confetti with each of your FT handles
- A wonderful personalized holiday card
- Bars of Ghirardelli Limited Edition Peppermint Bark
- Homemade coffee/hot chocolate
- Chocolate dipped marshmallows
- Gift cards to Dale and Thomas Popcorn
- Gift cards to Sonic Drive In
- Gift card to Panera's
- A MAJOR gift card to BestBuy (I know how that will be used)
We also received two individual envelopes from BestBuy.com that had two additional gift cards. Finally, there was an email notifying us of an additional gift certificate for The Chart House restaurant... ironically, one of my favorite restaurants!
As I have said over the years, I continue to coordinate the Secret Santa extravaganza because it is my small way to give back to this community. It is a tremendous pleasure for me to do this... and I do it for no other reason than the joy it brings to bring people together. I was reviewing the threads from the past five years... and looking over the notes/files I have (and I have them all for five years) from seasons past. I am reminded of the great posts about how someone received an amazing gift... and the private messages from people who did not receive a gift... or one they did not appreciate.
Over the past five years, I myself have sent out 31 gifts... 18 that I assigned to myself originally.... and 13 that I sent to make up for people who did not get gifts at all or in a timely manner. To this day, I think only about 8 of those people know they had Santa as their Secret Santa.
I do not know what other words I could say to convey how I feel about the generosity you have shown me. I can only say "
THANK YOU". I only hope that I can continue to serve you in this small way to enhance your Flyertalk experience.
Now, for those of you who have not sent your gifts to your Secret Santas, get on it NOW! Santa is in a great mood right now... but eventually will be sending out those pesty emails again......!
William