Not even a global pandemic can halt our annual celebrations. Festivus, move over. OPIGmas is here.

We were all lucky enough to have electricity; computers with webcams and microphones (Dan’s dalek incantations notwithstanding); and network connections; and somehow (for some of us) the time, to gather together around our twenty-first century electronic hearths and celebrate: Zoom, Gather Town, Among Us, Skribbl.io, and Codenames.

The much-awaited Secret Santa often reveals how naughty or nice the sender is, and sometimes surprising details about the relationship of the sender and recipient (I’m looking in the general direction of Dominik and Brennan). The rules are simple: spend up to £10 GBP, and don’t buy anything the boss wouldn’t buy for someone… But despite the hypothesis that the longer someone had been in OPIG, the more ‘pointed’ the gift would be, exceptions could still be found.

Armed with her new Easy Learning “Times Tables Bumper Book”, the boss was anointed “CEO of ******* Everything”, with her new desk name plate. Without coordinating, the boss’ PA independently received a desk name plate as “Fixer of Everything”. Perfect, on both counts.

With more than thirty OPIGs and OPIGlets, Secret Santa gifts ranged from a custom cryptic crossword (for the punniest OPIGlet); to an investment — sent by our resident meme-master — in a trapezoidal crypto-currency scheme that had already made money since purchasing… Why anyone in the group would know why another OPIGlet needed an unexplained gift, shall we say — eluded some of us. One of the newest members of OPIG was gifted an essential tool for his arsenal, in readiness for return (someday) to the theatre of post-5pm Nerf wars, thoughtfully provided by someone who should know. (Apparently, tales of these historic battles have reached The Other Place…)

Should a certain IT and FPGA guru find some idle time, he will now be able to color away around the feline nether regions. Following on from his record-breaking, Nobel prize winner-approved Blopig post, the Director of DeepMind Public Relations received his very own business card holder. And in recognition of her tenure in OPIG, having blogged since 2015, another received a medal for long service.

Our very own exclamation mark received a very cute Santa riding a unicycle and some chocolate gelt. Our resident Bayesian ketchup expert thoughtfully found a course on dealing with aging for one of our more senior OPIGlets; he was rewarded with two badminton racket pens (although it took him a while to discover their pen-ness…) Yours truly received personalized US campaign posters for the campaign trail in 2024, from a resident of the Fab region.

One of the heaviest users of our OPIG clusters was gifted a T-shirt with a screen shot of their queue usage and the meme, “It’s Free Real Estate”.

In recognition of resting b**** face, another of our more senior OPIGlets received a mug with the inscription, “Yet… despite the look on my face you’re still talking”. One of our newest OPIGlets was reminded of his roots with a set of chemistry themed shot glasses. Our canny Dr No Corrections (Fergus the First) was gifted, by the Second of his kind, a very cool beard survival kit, and a snake-enveloping-a-programmer(?) sticker.

A legendary T-shirt was given to our newest postdoc and legend.

Bora finally unveiled a very wrapped mug of a “knobicorn” for one of OPIG’s most ardent dog-lovers — sadly, the mug couldn’t handle all its layers of envelopment, and divorced its handle.

Secret Santa over, the boss declared that this year’s gifts were the most spot-on ever. We variously decanted into Gather Town to play Pictionary (we’re not competitive in the least…) and Code Names; hung out in the Chill Zone; played Among Us, or carried on chatting in Zoom.

Massive fun.