Secret Santa. It was my idea, so I'm in charge.

My family is doing a Secret (I will use that term loosely) Santa gift exchange this year. Mom and Dad, Erv and his family and my crew decided to pick names out of one of mom's bread baskets when we had a family dinner early in October.
The idea being that Christmas has basically become a gift card exchange. Pretty much we give each other a gift card and say,
"Go get yourself something nice."
My brilliant and economically sound idea was to just buy for one person, spend $50, write your name and at least three things you want and keep it secret. We all wrote from the same pad of paper and I made a rule to not put down gift cards.
Before we left the dinner table just about everyone knew who had who. My niece folded the corner of her piece of paper, I yelled out "I thought I said no gift cards." Erv looked at his paper and said,
"I don't know what any of this stuff is. Is this English?"
That was a give away that he picked Boy #3's name. The geek, and we are not sure what language he speaks. He has had to provide a picture and a two paragraph explanation of each item on his list to me since he was about twelve. I could tell Erv wanted to put his name back in the basket. I looked at Boy #2 and his girlfriend, they were showing each other the names they picked and then they looked at me. My dad is a stickler for rules and stuck to them saying he wasn't going to tell anyone who he had. He put his name in his pocket and avoided eye contact with mom. A tell tale sign that he picked her. Had he picked anyone else she would have been given the name because dad don't shop.
The Secret Santa drama continued for a few more minutes and then we did the dishes. Time will tell if my money saving, brilliant plan will work. I think everyone is happy to cut down on the Christmas present spending. The secret part blew out the window immediately which isn't a surprise because no one ever listens to me anyway. I'm still in charge though.