Secret Santa needs heave-ho ho ho

Now is the time to squelch the idea of having a Secret Santa exchange in your office.

Miss Manners understands that the workplace adoption of this custom, originally a children’s game, is meant to warm office relationships with an infusion of holiday cheer. That does not prevent it from being a perfectly dreadful idea.

She has ample testimony from her Gentle Readers about what a disaster it so often is. Apparently, the warmth arising after such exchanges is produced by human seething. On office time.

This is an activity that promises to bring out the worst in everyone.

Well, nearly everyone. There is always the well-meaning person who is determined to make everybody happy, and runs around the office blithely leaving cookies for dieters and diabetics, Christmas ornaments for non-Christians and turkeys for vegetarians. It is apt to be the same person who has organized the Secret Santa exchange, in addition to cajoling everyone to donate money to buy a handsome present for the boss.

As for the others, they are counting heavily on the secret part, regardless of their long knowledge that nothing has ever successfully remained a secret in that office. They all know who is seeing whom on the sly, how much others earn and who calls in sick but isn’t.

So some find it an opportunity to unload objects that are used, obvious freebies often complete with advertising or stuff that just comes close to being universally undesirable. Merchandise that first appeared in the office when an employee’s child was assigned to sell it for school is a popular choice, Miss Manners is told.

Although she tends to hear from those who were embarrassed or disappointed, Miss Manners knows that there are also generous people who go out of their way to find pleasantly suitable presents for their co-workers in these exchanges.

Unfortunately, they are apt to be paired with the cheesier Secret Santas.

But even if the system works, it creates undue pressure to spend time, money and thought pretending that these are social situations, where people come together through affection rather than chance.

Miss Manners can think of better ways for management to encourage office cheer. In order of cost, they are: Bonuses. Time off. Praise.

Dear Miss Manners: I have seen a number of weddings on television, and each time I am surprised to see the ceremony end in applause. For what? For whom? For the adorable couple, I assume, and yet I feel upset that the solemn moment is treated as an entertainment. Does this surprising ovation occur in a church, too, or in a synagogue, or a mosque? I feel that applause is more appropriate in a theater.

What is your opinion about the practice of clapping loudly for the newly wedded pair?

Gentle Reader: That it is hardly surprising, now that weddings have turned into show business extravaganzas, fashioned to dramatize the personalities and courtships of the principles rather than to witness their entering into the tradition of the society.