The One with the Secret Santa: Solving a Friends Mystery

I am currently rewatching Friends for the first time, from start-to-finish, in roughly a decade.  I have seen the show countless times though (from 1999-2010, I watched the show fully through pretty much every year...sometimes twice a year), and there are certain rituals I have.  Certain episodes get avoided (I hate when Ross cheats on Rachel...not wild about the aftermath of his saying "I take thee Rachel" either), while others get obsessed over.

Perhaps no episode, though, has me more curious than "The One With Chandler in a Box," the 8th episode of Season 4, because it gives us one of the few unsolved mysteries on the series.  While shows like Lost, Game of Thrones, and The Leftovers (all shows I am obsessed with) give you constant lore and things to discover, that's not the case for Friends, but there's a riddle in "The One with Chandler in a Box" that needs solving, and it revolves around a subplot of the friends doing Secret Santa.

At this point in the show, Phoebe & Monica have formed an ill-fated catering company, and both are recently unemployed so they need extra cash.  They propose to the group that they do "Secret Santa" where each of the six friends get a present for only one other person, and it's a surprise who gets whom (yes, Ross, I know how to use it correctly).  The show ends before they exchange presents, though, and it's never revealed in a future episode what the gifts are, so the show doesn't really tell us the answer of which name each person drew.  Bothered while watching this (and because this is how my brain works), I decided this was something I would take on-figuring out which name each person received.

There are four facts that are stated in the show that we can start out with in terms of clues.  First is that we know Phoebe has Rachel, because initially Chandler wants to trade with her for someone other than whom he has (Chandler's original name is never stated), and Phoebe is excited because Rachel is hard to shop for.  Later we learn that Ross has Monica, whom he is trying to swap for because he already bought her a Hanukkah present, and that Chandler doesn't have Ross (because he's trying to get him because he already bought a suitcase with the initials "RG" for Rachel).  The final clue we learn is that Joey does not have Chandler, because he tries to trade for him right before the end credits.

From this, though, we can infer a few more things.  Chandler asks to switch with Phoebe & Monica, so it is implied that he doesn't have either of them, so the only person he could possibly have is Joey.  This means that the only three unknowns are Phoebe, Joey, and Rachel.

Joey can't have Chandler, so he has to have Phoebe or Ross.  Doing some inferring, Monica can't have Ross, because if she did she would've switched when Chandler tried to get him from her.  As a result, we know she has to have either Phoebe or Chandler.  Rachel is the only person who has no hints.  None of the extended scenes solely on the DVD's reveal any other hints.

Using solely clues in the episode, here's what we know:

• Phoebe has Rachel
• Ross has Monica
• Chandler has Joey
• Joey has Phoebe or Ross
• Monica has Chandler or Phoebe
• Rachel has Ross, Phoebe, or Chandler

These are the only stated hints, and so there's no totally data-based way to figure out all six Secret Santa's.  However, you can get there if you make some inferences.  When Joey asks "who had Chandler, cause I need to trade?" Phoebe looks at Monica, and Monica grins.  If we take of this as a "canon in the show" moment, it would imply that Monica got Chandler (a slight stretch, as it's likely just an acting choice by Courteney Cox, but for resolution let's go with it).  That still leaves Joey & Rachel undecided.

However, if we assume (off-camera) that Chandler asked Rachel if she had Ross, because he'd asked everyone else (except for Joey, who was fighting with him), and she didn't switch with him, that would mean that Joey would have to have Ross by process of elimination...which would mean that Rachel has Phoebe.  So:

• Phoebe has Rachel
• Ross has Monica
• Chandler has Joey
• Joey has Ross
• Monica has Chandler
• Rachel has Phoebe

There-the next rewatch of Friends you will thank me for this!