RedditGifts Hopes to Unwrap Guinness Record for Largest Secret Santa Swap

CHRISTMAS -- December 26, 2011 at 12:34 PM EDT

RedditGifts Hopes to Unwrap Guinness Record for Largest Secret Santa Swap

If you think organizing a secret Santa exchange for your office is tricky, try organizing one for the entire globe.

As people across the world finish unwrapping Christmas gifts, almost 40,000 people have also been unwrapping gifts for the past month given by anonymous gifters from 114 countries, thanks to the online community Reddit and their gift-exchange site RedditGifts.

For the third year in a row, RedditGifts has organized a worldwide holiday exchange, but this year the site and its community are aiming for a Guinness Record for world's largest secret santa. The call is being answered by the global Reddit community, as this exchange is easily RedditGifts' largest yet, surprising even the people who helped organize it.

Hari Sreenivasan spoke with Erik Martin, general manager of Reddit, about the huge scale of the exchange, the quest for the world record and what to expect from RedditGifts in the future.

"Secretly in my head, I was hoping we could maybe get 25,000-30,000 people this year just based on previous years," Martin said. "It's just amazing how much fun people have and how the word spreads to their friends and other people in the community, and the numbers keep growing."

Recipients post pictures and video to the RedditGifts site displaying the wide variety of gifts they have received from total strangers. Gifts have ranged from hand-made items to DVD sets, to even a four-day cruise. A lucky participant even received a package of gifts from television adventurer Bear Grylls, which she excitedly posted under the headline of "I won Reddit Secret Santa."

Justin Scuiletti edited this video. Follow Hari and Erik Martin on Twitter, Circle Hari on Google Plus and Like Hari on Facebook.

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