Solving The Secret Santa Selection "Problem"

Mon, 21 Oct 2013 20:05:00 +0000

My girlfriend’s family does a variation of secret santa for Christmas every year instead of the more traditional American “gift armageddon” strategy. I’m a fan because it encourages gift creativity and thoughtfulness while eliminating the crazy holiday consumerism that is prevalent here.

Every year the selection of giver-receiver pairs must be made and this can be a challenge because there are strict rules:

everyone gives once, everyone receives once
you can’t give to your partner
you can’t give a gift to someone who is giving a gift to you
it should be a secret until gift-giving time

Last year the selections were made by my girlfriend’s sister and Christmas was absolutely delightful. But then at some point afterward I opened my big fat mouth and said that a computer program should do the selections. The response was more or less “make it so.” Here’s my Pythonic attempt. For the web I’ve blanked out the PARTNERS map and my SMTP information. The rest is as I ran it.

Family on galvanist

Solving The Secret Santa Selection "Problem"