2025 Secret Santa Workout Gift Exchange

The Secret Santa Workout Gift Exchange is back for 2025! Here's how it works:

  1. You must have an active Check-In Thread here in the Hive to participate. This is so your Santa can read up on the types of workouts you like to do, so they can design a suitable "gift" for you. If you're new here: Welcome! You can still join in if you set up a new check-in thread now and post at least three updates prior to the Secret Santa assignments going out. (More is better.) Also: if there's not much content in your check-in thread yet, please post an intro/summary of where you're at in your fitness journey right now.
  2. If you'd like to join in, sign up by commenting on this thread. The deadline to join is Sunday, November 23, 2025.
  3. If you decide to join in, you will be assigned your giftee, either by me or by my assistant elf (if somebody volunteers to assist me with this task), via DAREBEE private message. Santa assignments will be delivered by Wednesday, November 26. Be sure to check your in-box!
  4. Once you receive your assignment, go and read your giftee's check-in thread. (If it's really long, just reading the most recent couple of pages is fine.) Then design a 15-30 minute workout that you think will be fun and challenging for your giftee to complete. The theme of the workout is: The Riotous Revelry Rescue. (More on this below.) Write up the workout, and send it via DAREBEE private message, either to me or to my assistant elf (whichever elf gave you the assignment). The deadline for turning in your gift is Saturday, December 6. DO NOT BE LATE!
  5. I will post all of the workout gifts here in this thread (so you won't know who your gift came from). Your gift will be posted here no later than Sunday, December 21. (The Gift-Wrapping Elf and the Dragon Elf need time to get the gifts wrapped and delivered. Which is why you need to get your gifts submitted on time!)
  6. You must complete your workout gift and post in your check-in thread that you did it, no later than Sunday, January 4, 2026.
  7. Is it better to give, or to receive? To investigate this question, you must also complete the gift you gave and post about doing so in your check-in thread. To make it harder for your giftee to identify you, you may break up this workout across multiple days and/or be vague in describing the exercises you did. The deadline for completing this is also Sunday, January 4.
  8. Read up on your fellow Bees' holiday adventures in their check-in threads and try to guess who was your Santa!

The Rules:

  1. Try to wrap your gift in a story that explains why your giftee must complete the exercises you have assigned to them. (For some inspiration, check out the awesome gifts that were created for last year's workout gift exchange.) The theme for this year's stories is: It's holiday time again, and your giftee Bee is so excited for the Hive's annual holiday party! But when they arrive back at the Hive, eager to begin the festivities, they find a scene of chaos. Everything is in disarray! All the Bees are buzzing around frantically, working at cross purposes to one another, and the Hive itself looks like a scene from a horror movie, not a welcoming place of comfort and joy. What is going on? Your giftee Bee must get to the bottom of the problem and, through completing the exercises in their workout gift, get all of the Bees working together again to get the Hive ready for the party.
  2. Don't be gruesome! We're here to challenge one another. But also to have fun. The workout you design is meant to be a gift. Do not assign anyone 100 burpees! (Unless they've written recently in their check-in thread about how much they LOVE burpees and really hope that Santa will gift them with a high volume of them.)
  3. All exercises assigned should be no-equipment exercises--unless you know from reading your giftee's recent check-in posts that they have regular access to the equipment you're asking them to use.
  4. If you assign an obscure exercise, you need to include a link to a demo of how to do it. Anything in the DAREBEE video exercise library is fair game (if it's within your giftee's wheelhouse). For yoga poses, please use pose names from the Pocket Yoga pose library (or provide a link to a demo if you're assigning a specific sequence, or a pose that's not in that library).
  5. Modifications are fine! If you are gifted with push-ups, but can only do kneeling push-ups at this point in your fitness journey, for example, it's fine to do the kneeling variety. Conversely: if you assign your giftee step-jacks as part of their workout, because you've read in their check-in thread that they're not doing high impact activities at the moment, but you want to do jumping jacks as part of your "gift you gave" workout, this is fine too. Try to complete both the gift you receive, and the gift you gave to the best of your ability, using exercise variations that are right for you. In the Hive, we honour where each individual bee is at in their own fitness journey at this moment in time.
  6. You are welcome to include fun activities in the gift you design (e.g.: singing, dancing, etc.) if they are appropriate for your giftee Bee.
  7. All of the gifts, like last year, will be gift-wrapped in the DAREBEE way. To assist you in designing a gift of a suitable length, and to assist the Gift-Wrapping Elf in wrapping your gift, we have some guidelines this year on the number of exercises that can be included. Please see below for details.
  8. If you have any questions--either about designing your gift, or about how to complete your gift once you've received it, please post them here. (Or you can PM me if posting your question publicly would give away too much about the gift you're designing.) I will try to answer all gift questions myself (so your Secret Santa does not need to out themself by answering themself). Santas: I, or my assistant elf, may contact you via PM if a question is asked about the gift you gave which I don't know how to answer.
  9. The December 6 deadline is a HARD DEADLINE. Please don't miss it! If you sign up to participate in this gift exchange, you are committing to designing a workout gift for one of your fellow Bees, and submitting it to me (or my assistant elf) between November 26 and December 6, 2025.
  10. Have fun!
Comment below if you want to join in!
 
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Laura Rainbow Dragon said:
"Hey so uh-- Look-- Sorry. Me and my mer-friends had a sick mer-party and uh-- Oh my God, is that a dog? She's so cute-- Does someone have treats? Here-- Give me those, here you go, girl! Who is the goodest girl? Is it you? Is it you?"
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If you replace "mermaids" with "realtors", this happened to Shelby and me IRL on Saturday night.
(Except they did not ignore me. The realtors also offered me wine and chocolates while they were passing around the treat jar so everyone could have a turn giving treats to Shelby.)
 
Santa, you have no idea how excited I am for this. I even have family staying with me right now but I don't care, Biggie, Munchie, and I have an adventure to go on!

Also, will I be printing these off and adding them to the binder I made last year? Why yes, yes I will!
 
Reminder to everyone: Today, January 4, is the deadline for completing both the gift you received and the gift you gave and posting about doing so in your check-in thread.
If you got sick/injured or life otherwise got in the way of you completing the gift you gave yet, please post some sort of clue, either here or in your check-in thread, to give your gift recipient a fair shot at trying to find you.

For now you may still only make public guesses as to the identity of your own Santa. We'll give everyone a week to try to guess their own Santa, then open up the guessing free-for-all on Monday, January 12th.

@Anek already got us started this year by correctly guessing that her Secret Santa is @JJakaSquirrel . Well done, Anek!

I'm going to put my guess out there too. I always have an unfair advantage over the rest of you, because I assign half of the Santas, and often a couple of folks on my assistant's Santa team end up outing themselves to me during the gift design and collection phase for one reason or another. So I'm guessing from a smaller pool of potential Santas than the rest of you. But I think anyone who's read the gifts from the past couple of years will already have guessed my Santa too, as her writing style is so distinct and wonderful. @f1shie thank you so much for my gift! I literally laugh out loud every time I read it! It is so wonderful! Shelby also says thank you for writing her part into the story. Helping to keep me in great shape by supervising my home workouts and taking me for long walks has always been very important to Shelby. So she was super happy to have been given such an important role in this workout. I can assure you she took her part very seriously!
 
Yay!!! Finally I guess correctly! The hints in @JJakaSquirrel thread were very excellent.

@Laura Rainbow Dragon I thought of f1shie the moment I read your gift :D

I leave a hint for my giftee here: I tried to give you things you like, and I didn't realize how hard they would be for me to do! I'm out of practice with those things :D
 
Oh, man, I don't even know where to start with my guess.

@Anek great guess! I tried to at least kind of make the exercises rabbit-like glad you enjoyed!
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon said:
Reminder to everyone: Today, January 4, is the deadline for completing both the gift you received and the gift you gave and posting about doing so in your check-in thread.
If you got sick/injured or life otherwise got in the way of you completing the gift you gave yet, please post some sort of clue, either here or in your check-in thread, to give your gift recipient a fair shot at trying to find you.

For now you may still only make public guesses as to the identity of your own Santa. We'll give everyone a week to try to guess their own Santa, then open up the guessing free-for-all on Monday, January 12th.

@Anek already got us started this year by correctly guessing that her Secret Santa is @JJakaSquirrel . Well done, Anek!

I'm going to put my guess out there too. I always have an unfair advantage over the rest of you, because I assign half of the Santas, and often a couple of folks on my assistant's Santa team end up outing themselves to me during the gift design and collection phase for one reason or another. So I'm guessing from a smaller pool of potential Santas than the rest of you. But I think anyone who's read the gifts from the past couple of years will already have guessed my Santa too, as her writing style is so distinct and wonderful. @f1shie thank you so much for my gift! I literally laugh out loud every time I read it! It is so wonderful! Shelby also says thank you for writing her part into the story. Helping to keep me in great shape by supervising my home workouts and taking me for long walks has always been very important to Shelby. So she was super happy to have been given such an important role in this workout. I can assure you she took her part very seriously!
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What gave it away lol

I’m glad you liked it! And im glad Shelby got her treats <3

I’ll guess mine later. I am le tired.
 
graoumia said:
I am not, but i was wondering the same about you, are you my wonderful Secret Santa again this year?
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I am not yours either!

So much fun that we have all these talented Bees around!
To be honest, the writing style I immediately recognised was @f1shie :lovelots:

Well I do have a shortlist of options, so on to the next:
The lovely @NancyTree , are you my Secret Santa? :sendinglove:
 
I will put out a hint for my Santa (Apologies, having 2 sets of divorced parents and 2 December birthdays REALLY wrecked my time).

Munchie was very concerned that the exercizes we put in your workout matched what we said you were doing. She would pretend to do what was said in the story and we would figure out what exercize matched that.
 
So, I had an upper hand being the Beaver Elf because I was able to cross half the names off from the start.

In going through Check in threads I have narrowed it down to:

Laura, Wloke20, Solveig, or Graoumia

I have to admit, I'm leaning toward @graoumia because taking a few things into account could be the kidlets and my low impact needs.... am I right?
 
Saffity said:
So, I had an upper hand being the Beaver Elf because I was able to cross half the names off from the start.

In going through Check in threads I have narrowed it down to:

Laura, Wloke20, Solveig, or Graoumia

I have to admit, I'm leaning toward @graoumia because taking a few things into account could be the kidlets and my low impact needs.... am I right?
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No it is not me.
 
Maegaranthelas said:
@Saffity is it you then? :shine:
You're the last on my list, I'll need to search through all the other threads again if it's not you :amused:
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Sorry Maeg, not you :giggle: but seeing as I'm the one who matched you up... I know who it iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis.
 
Some of our Santas have been very ninja-like this year. Although we know quite a bit through process of elimination at this point.

FindMySanta1.png

Not a lot of people haven't guessed @graoumia at this point, although she gave us a very good clue!
 
No one has guessed me yet--although I have not tried to be very stealthy. I did complete more than two of the gifts. But that was my only trickery. Every exercise I have done I have recorded in my workout log. (Note: if an exercise was included in one of my regular workouts or challenges, I did not list it separately, even if I also did it as part of a Secret Santa workout.)
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon said:
No one has guessed me yet--although I have not tried to be very stealthy. I did complete more than two of the gifts. But that was my only trickery. Every exercise I have done I have recorded in my workout log. (Note: if an exercise was included in one of my regular workouts or challenges, I did not list it separately, even if I also did it as part of a Secret Santa workout.)
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But you've done so much! Where to begin?!
 
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