Bill Gates Sends Secret Santa Gift to Reddit User

Dec. 19, 2013— -- While everyone knows the best part of a Secret Santa gift exchange is finding out the identity of the gift giver, a Reddit user participating in this year's online Secret Santa gift giving got the surprise of her life during the big reveal.

The user, identified only as Rachel, posted a list of gifts she hoped to get from her Reddit Secret Santa - makeup, nail polish, "glittery things" and an iPad. But that's not what she got from Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

"I thought Bill sounded like a friendly fellow," Rachel said. "In fact, I had this whole image of this poor guy named Bill trying to navigate my wish list full of makeup, nail polish, glittery things to buy me. Quite frankly, I felt bad for this Bill," Rachel said in a follow-up post on Reddit.

Rachel explained that a package showed up at her house with a card addressed "To Rachel, From Bill." It contained a stuffed cow, a note saying a donation had been made in her name to Heifer International and a large National Geographic book about world travel. She was delighted.

"Still not realizing who was gifting me, I quickly opened ... the gift, which was an amazing and beautiful travel book, 'Journeys of a Lifetime.' I went on and on in my likes and dislikes for my love of travel and seeing the world, and I cannot WAIT to read this. Not only that, but I love pictures and reading up on new places. This gift was perfect!" she wrote.

"I quickly flipped through it, missing the inscription, message and signature from Bill on the first page and headed to the final part of my gift. Once again, To me, From Bill. I opened this and it's a man holding a sign. Oh ... wait," Rachel wrote, describing the moment she realized the identity of her gifter.

"And then it finally hit me. All the presents I just tore open, the charity, then everything -- was from Bill GATES.

Rachel said she went back through the gifts and read the inscriptions again, noting that all of the gifts were perfectly tailored to her interests. She found a picture Gates had taken of himself with the stuffed cow and the card made out to her.

"My jaw hit the EVER LOVING FLOOR. I went back to all the other gifts completely shocked. My god. Never in my entire life did I imagine, ever, ever, ever that Bill would get me. I am SO SO thankful for the time, thought and energy he put into my gift, and especially thankful for him overnighting it," she wrote.

At the end of her post, Rachel made sure to add a sly apology for asking for an Apple iPad:

"PS: Sorry for the Apple ipad on my wish list, that was really awkward," she wrote.