Deb Geisler, Guinness Record Holder

Deb Geisler is a certified Guinness World Record title holder. In fact, her certificate came in today’s mail. She was one of 38,244 participants in Reddit.com’s 2011 Secret Santa gift exchange, the largest gift exchange ever.

Deb wasn’t in it for the record, she’s been enjoying Reddit.com’s gift exchanges all along:

I had a lot of fun at Christmas with the exchanges and others throughout the year for socks, cook books, regular books, and even one that was a one-way gifting to send much-needed school supplies to K-12 teachers). You can see the gifts site (there’s even a Dr. Who exchange coming up – but I’m not a Dr. Who fan).

Participants in these gift exchanges get matched as a sender to one person, and as the recipient of another, somewhere in the U.S. or overseas.

Ironically, the Secret Santas didn’t actually stay secret:

Everyone who took part in the exchange was eligible to get a certificate, which cost GBP20. Then Guinness sent all of the folks who had ordered the certificates email…without masking any of the addresses. So our huge, anonymous enterprise suddenly wasn’t so anonymous. Most of us thought it was hysterically funny, and the number of people replying to the full list reached a couple of hundred. The goal seemed to be to out-funny the other repliers.

Guinness felt quite embarrassed. They ended up refunding everyone’s payments and giving them the certificates free of charge.