RULES

• 1. FIRST, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, do not even bother signing up if you're only in this to get gifts. You have to give to get. In past years, we've had people not taking their commitment in signing up for this seriously. This is a gift exchange and you must understand that you are indeed making a commitment to make gifts for someone when you sign up. We all want this to be fun for everyone involved and it stops being fun when someone's Santa abandons them or is constantly late in sending their gifts. If you have something come up and you think you might be late in sending a gift, just let me and your Santee know. Life happens and we all understand that. All I ask is that you stay in touch with me and your Santee.
  
  HERE'S THE GUIDELINE: A few others who have participated in Secret Santa before were contacted and the general consensus was that this new guideline is unfortunately necessary. The guideline is if I have hunt you up MORE THAN ONCE (meaning you will only receive ONE WARNING) because you're late with a gift and neither me nor your Santee has heard from you OR if you're constantly flaking out and not following through with what you say you're gonna do, not only will you be dropped from Secret Santa this year, but you will also be barred from participating in future Secret Santa events. Now, if you know you'll be late with a gift and you let me and your Santee know, this guideline won't apply to you (like if you know you'll be away from your computer for a week and you want to send your Santee two gifts when you get back or if you can make a gift ahead of time and send it early, you can do that, too). As long as you keep us informed, you shouldn't have a problem. However, this guideline will kick in for you if you don't follow through on what you say and keep us informed.
  
  ** This guideline is not being implemented to be harsh, but it is simply for everyone to realize this isn't something you can just blow off or take lightly. I want anyone that wants to participate to sign up, but don't do so if you can't commit to it.
• 2. Please make sure you give me a valid email address where you want all Secret Santa information to be sent. This will also be the email that your Santa sends your gifts to. An anonymous email account is no longer available for participants to use due to Google upping their security, and with people from different parts of the world logging into the same account, it was thought to be hacked and has been shut down. You are more than welcome to create and use your own anonymous email so your gifts can be sent anonymously. You can also email your gifts to me at secretsanta [at] cordy.nu and I will pass along your gifts to your Santees :)
• 3. DON'T TELL ANYONE who you're making gifts for — not even non-participants. That takes the fun out of it. :)
• 4. I know that not everyone at TFL gets along with every person in the TFL community. When signing up, you are more than welcome to give the names of some people you wouldn't mind making gifts for and you are also welcome to tell me anyone that you would prefer not to make gifts for. I don't need to know reasons why and I will not think less of you. Keeping this in mind, something could slip through the cracks and I could assign you someone that you just cannot make gifts for. If that happens, I just ask you to please let me know asap. :) Also, if you've been Santa to someone before that you'd rather not be Santa for again, you can tell me that, too.
• 5. The first gift set must be sent off no later than one week after assignments are sent out. From then on, after assignments are sent out, one gift set per week is required.