Strangers everywhere are trying to help this boy solve his mystery Secret Santa request letter
"Anything sporty"? "Running shoes"?
Strangers united to help a boy solve his mystery Secret Santa request letter.
If you’ve ever played "Secret Santa," you know it’s a very simple concept: buy a gift for someone at the holiday party, don’t tell anyone who you bought it for, and make the big reveal after all the presents are unwrapped. ("Dirty Santa" is a bit more complicated.) But one kid’s classroom "Secret Santa" gathering spawned a legitimate handwriting puzzle that wound up stumping the Internet.
Consulting the advice of eagle-eyed strangers, the parent of the young boy wrote online, "Help with what this secret Santa request says?! Son came home with a secret Santa and no one knows what this says! Help! Thanks in advance!"
Thousands of strangers weighed in to help decipher a two-word phrase scribbled on a tiny piece of paper.
from whatisit
What do people think this "Secret Santa" letter says?
If you have zero clue what it says, you’re not alone. But before you have some of these guesses Inception-ed into your head, look over the image for yourself and see what you think. The Redditors’ responses are so varied, it’s impossible to sort them into groups, but here are some of the best:
"No clue, but I would use that for the gift tag!"
"'Anything Sparkly' I have to decipher my own handwriting frequently. Follow the cursive letters, some letters are used twice, kind of."
"Urinary storage. Bro wants a Foley catheter and bag."
"Showed it to my pharmacist and he immediately told me: running shoes. So what’s the chance that he’s been giving me the wrong prescription 😂"
"Anything sports"
"Anything sporty"
"Nothing sparkly"
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"Driving gloves"
"A train set"
"I think it says 'amazing stories,' which was both a TV series in the '80s, and a pulp science fiction magazine in the 1950s."
"Is it someone’s name? I see Anthony as the first name 🤷🏻♀️"
"How are you guys having a hard time with this? They clearly want awning spokes"
"Anything spooky"
"arting sporacs"
"Mining stories"
"This doctor is requesting a new stethoscope"
The most clever response here is probably "Flaming globes of Sigmund," a deep-cut reference to a Seinfeld storyline where Jerry scribbles down a mid-dream joke idea and then spends the entire episode asking people what it says.
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The truth decoded
For a little extra context, OP TheCatWithATiara confirmed in the comments that their son’s classmates are 11 and 12, guessing that the note might have said "anything sporty." After having the son confirm with a teacher the following day, they learned their hunch was correct: "solved[!] Son confirmed a friend mentioned the secret Santa would be happy with a football, so it's definitely this!" Congrats to the multiple users, including Sunshine_15, who chimed in with the right guess. The teamwork here is genuinely heartwarming.
For an even more heartwarming gift-giving story, look back to this viral moment from 2023, when a daughter surprised her dad at Christmas with the "prized possession"—a football card—that he’d sold three decades prior. Beautiful stuff. It just goes to show the emotional range of "Secret Santa," a tradition that can bring us laughter, detective work, and even tears.