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:
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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I don't see anything in your exercises that clue me in that you're my secret Santa. I'm also really bad with clues. 😆
 
I leave another little clue here: I have a writing habit that is visible in every gift I have given in the previous editions, and as far as I can see I'm the only one who writes it.
Also, I only left clues here, not in my thread.
 
Saffity said:
Hmmmm.... all right, going to make my second stab in the dark.... I have a 33.333333% chance of getting it right.... :imp:

@Sólveig were you my secret santa?
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graoumia said:
I am still waiting for @NancyTree answer if she could be my Santa, for a reason i cannot explain here, but i am also suspecting other bees, @Sólveig could it be you ?
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I have travelled all the seas. I've seen places that people can only dream of. I ate among the richest and the poorest, buclked swashes among the most honorable and the most filthy. The sea is a nasty lady, but is fair, and the mountains are high. But from all of my travels, and from all the conquests, I can tell you, right now, without any reasonable doubt, that I am, indeed, in this very fact, at this very moment, with the Gods of the universe as my witness, in the name of my entire ancestry, my love for this world, and the stars that have guided me, that this Tiefling was not your Santa!

@Saffity I'm very sorry for this. You might be the Mother of Dragons, but there's only one dragon around here who's been in the stars ;)

I hope that serves as the clue. I already dropped it on my log the day I did both gifts!
 
graoumia said:
I struggled a bit to find you . But i really loved my gift, thank you so much. I will certainly do it again soon. :mhearts: :mhearts: :mhearts:
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Munchie was VERY concerned that we make the exercizes correct, so, bending to pick up stuff and reaching to put it away. Climbing the ladder to clean... all by her specifications.
 
Saffity said:
Ok, so, after much deliberation (and filling out Laura's chart with my additional information) I'm going to strongly guess that my Santa was @Wloke20 and if I'm wrong there's only one other possibility as far as I've narrowed it down.
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sry, I'm a bit late to the party, but guilty as charged :D

maybe next time I will have more time to hide better, I was just happy I got it all done and hopefully I will finally find the time to start my own search this week, you have already done most of the work, so I currently have five candidates :ss:
 
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