One of the things I used to love about the holidays was the annual Christmas party at work where all of my co-workers would finally reveal their special week-long role as a Secret Santa.  The Secret Santa tradition has sadly gone away for me since becoming a stay-at-home mom, and even though I work the same amount of hours (if not more) from home now, I have no one to play Secret Santa with...or so I thought.

JCPenney has found a super unique way to revive the Secret Santa tradition with friends and loved ones from around the country with their brand new Santa gift tags.  These holiday gift tags feature a QR code that you scan with your QR reader app on your smartphone.

Once this is done, you'll simply enter your cell phone number on the site that pops up and the JCPenney holiday greeter will call you and give you the chance to send a personal voice message to the gift recipient.  This message is stored in each specific QR code, so that once you stick your JCPenney Santa Tags on their respective gifts, the recipient will be able to hear your personalized greeting!  Watch the video below for more details:

This holiday season, JCPenney made me one happy gal because they gave me a chance to try out exactly how the whole Secret Santa experience worked with the JCPenney Santa Tags.  Several of us mom bloggers got thrown in the mix and assigned as Secret Santas for each other!

I've been a huge fan of JCPenney for as long as I can remember and so it was a lot of fun shopping for the perfect holiday present for another fellow blogger.  JCPenney made things super simple on me as well, for they have all of their online items well-categorized based on both type of item and price point.  Before long, I had found the exact gift I wanted to give to my special blogging fashionista!

After that was accomplished, I simply followed the very easy instructions to record my special greeting using the QR code on the Santa gift tag.  If you don't have a smartphone, don't worry!  You can actually still participate and record your personalized greeting by simply dialing a direct 1-800 number and inputting the information from your specific Santa tag via phone.

Best of all, there's absolutely NO CHARGE to use this great gift-giving service.  Just pick up one of the FREE JCPenney Santa Tags on your next trip to the store and attach one to every present you send this year.  With the new Santa gift tags, a token of your love and well-wishes can be sent right along with your gift!

Disclosure:  I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of JCPenney and received a JCPenney Secret Santa Gift and a promotional item to thank me for participating.  All opinions expressed are my own.