What did I get from my rematch Santa this year? Well, there's a long story and a short story. Both of which I will post below.

The Short Story

Before the deadline for sending gifts, my original secret Santa messaged me and apologised, saying he'd not be able to send a gift due to personal circumstances. I told him I understood, and applied for a rematch. I thought nothing of it. While this is my first adventure on Redditgifts, a friend had told me that sometimes a Secret Santa would fall through and rematchers were kind souls who would help out in such circumstances.

On Christmas Day my rematch picked up my details and sent a gift.

[See long story for more on this]

A week or so later I received:

A beautiful 'Crows before Hoes' mug

A rulebook for 'Laundry' (I looove tabletop rulebooks yum!)

An excellent scenario for Call of Cthulhu

These gifts were absolutely amazing - just perfectly the sort of thing I was hoping for.

I would like to thank my rematch secret Santa from the bottom of my accursed soul for them!

But those items were not the only gift I received...

THE LONG STORY

OK so, rewinding back to Christmas Day. My rematch picked up my details and sent a gift. They also sent me a message, signing it 'a Belgian girl'. We spoke about our interests, and how similar they were, we talked about art, museums, history, printing and many things besides. 50 odd messages and two days later we exchanged numbers, though to maintain the integrity of Secret Santa I lived in a state of absolute ignorance as to her name and what she looked like. Meanwhile she knew my full name, where I lived and my appearance. We agreed to lift the veil once I had received all of my gifts.

We kept talking. At first we just messaged each other a lot, but after a while we began voicechatting. I'm not sure if I can quite do this justice here... but we started to make each other smile, and laugh, and we began to talk at every possible opportunity. On New Year’s Eve she suggested we met. I agreed. There was some drunken talk of Paris. By the time my gifts arrived the following week we were quite taken with each other, we'd spoken every day and started a game of CK2 (in which my luck as Duke of Bavaria has lately taken a distinct turn for the worse).

We've now known each other for almost three weeks and we have just booked a weekend in Paris together.

Thank you redditgifts, for the absolute best gift I have ever received. On a scale of 1 - 10, 10 feels insufficient.

Absolute credit to the random number generator that put us together.