Although America’s spies are shrouded in mystery, it appears they celebrate the holidays the same way as the rest of the US.
Since 2004, the National Security Agency (NSA) has held an internal design competition among its employees to create the annual Christmas decoration each year.
Some, like 2016’s “Red, White and Blue” Christmas gift bow and 2024’s Nutcracker, have leaned more into the full look and spirit of the holidays.
Others, however, have celebrated the agency’s ‘cloak and dagger’ history, such as the 2019 replica of the famous World War II encryption device, the ‘Enigma’ machine and the terrifying 2004 model the NSA granite pyramid monument to his fallen agents.
One NSA ornament from the 1990s even worked as a functional encryption and decryption device for encrypting secret messages: the NSA’s 1998 Cipher Disk ornament.
“The Cipher Disk has been used for secure communications since its invention in Italy around the year 1470,” according to a booklet that accompanied the gold-plated spy wheel.
‘The Cipher Disk saw widespread use in the US during the Civil War [and] about half a century later, the U.S. Army adopted a simplified version of the disk.”
But even by turn-of-the-century standards, when this simplified version of the device was deployed in World War I, the Cipher Disk provided only “a few hours of protection against tactical messages” intercepted by America’s enemies.
Above, the National Security Agency (NSA) offered this filigree star ornament in 2009, the winner of a design competition that the secret US spy agency has organized annually since 2004
One NSA ornament even worked as a functional encryption and decryption device to encrypt secret messages: NSA’s 1998 Cipher Disk ornament (above). “The Cipher Disk has been used for secure communications since its invention in Italy around the year 1470,” the agency said.
It is unclear when the NSA’s ornament tradition officially began, as the National Cryptologic Museum has declined multiple requests for comment from DailyMail.com.
“We have nothing to offer you on this matter,” a spokesperson for the NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum told DailyMail.com when asked about the ornaments.
But former NSA network specialist Jeremy Duffy was more candid: “Some people complained for a number of years that they were very cheap and poorly designed.”
For example if noted one eBay seller in their auction a gold ‘NSA satellite dish’ ornament, made in 2000: ‘The antenna has bends. See photos.’
But even if today a strong critic of the agencyDuffy still has great respect for some of the NSA Christmas decorations, such as the 2008 etching of the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade.
‘The ornament [was] great,” he said.
While the NSA’s ornament design competition is a new tradition of the 21st century, according to the agency The Dallas Morning Newsthe annual holiday decorations themselves extend at least a decade earlier.
In his more than a decade at the NSA, Duffy said the jewelry was treated like any other corporate asset, meaning opinions varied about their value.
Some NSA Christmas decorations celebrate the NSA’s ‘cloak and dagger’ history, such as the 2019 replica of the famous World War II encryption device, the ‘Enigma’ machine (above)
The 2019 Enigma machine ornament opens (photo above) to reveal the small typewriter used to encode the encrypted and decrypted messages of World War II
Other NSA holiday decorations, such as the 2024 NSA Nutcracker (pictured), have leaned more on the entire look and spirit of the holidays than on the agency’s history
“As for the decorations,” he told DailyMail.com, “they were something that some people enjoyed getting and others didn’t care about.”
But that hasn’t stopped citizens from becoming obsessed with the clandestine crafts and enjoying the NSA’s “Secret Santa” holiday tchotchkes for years to come.
Vintage spy and memorabilia collector Richard Brisson, who runs the site ultrasecret.ca of Canada suspects that in some years the agency’s Christmas decorations include more than one per year.
“I believe many more ornaments (without assigned years) have been produced since the early 1990s,” Brisson told DailyMail.com via email.
His own collection only goes back to 1994, an NSA “snowflake” ornament, but he has seen a few undated ornaments – including an elaborate “filigree star” ornament similar to the 2009 edition, but undated, and a other undated ‘Peace’ ornament. ‘ and ‘Unity’ ornament possibly from 2014.
Although the NSA knows few details about their decorations, that hasn’t stopped ordinary citizens from becoming obsessed with these clandestine crafts and indulging in the NSA’s “Secret Santa” gifts for years to come. Above is a still from the YouTube account Spy Collection, which collects the ornaments
Vintage spy and memorabilia collector Richard Brisson suspects that in some years there was more than one ornament per year. “I believe that many more ornaments (without assigned years) have been produced since the early 1990s,” Brisson told DailyMail.com
“Some people complained for a few years that they were very cheap and poorly designed,” ex-NSA network specialist Jeremy Duffy told DailyMail.com. As one eBay seller noted in his eBay listing for a 2000 gold “NSA satellite dish,” “The antenna has bends. See photos’
‘For 2014 […] I haven’t been able to find anyone to confirm the actual ornament for that year,” Brisson said. “I can’t find the year listed there unless it’s secretly coded somehow!”
NSA historians have revealed this the top-secret spy agency started with an extremely meager, Scrooge-esque Christmas holiday policy.
Beginning in December 1952, the then-director of the NSA allowed only one strictly designated hour and a half between 3:00 PM and 4:30 PM on December 24 for all Christmas parties for the agency’s cryptographers, staff, and spies of the agency’s field agents.
Complimentary Christmas trees were available for each unit, ‘flame proofed before distribution’, but had to be immediately removed from the building on Christmas Eve at 5.30pm, an hour after the short Christmas party was allocated.
The NSA’s 2004 ornament was a haunting model of the agency’s granite memorial pyramid (above)
This 2004 NSA ornament features a seasonal wreath on the back (above)
Above: The back of a 2009 NSA ‘filigree star’ ornament
In 1963, the NSA offered its personnel “(as much as!) $0.25 per person, twice a year, toward the cost of a mid-season activity and a Christmas party,” according to the agency’s historians.
“That might buy you one large bottle of iced tea from the Agency vending machine in 2018,” this NSA story explained, “with three cents left.”
To make matters worse, these miserly ‘Fun Funds’ had to be requested by filling out a special ‘Memorandum Request Form’.
These were years when even the existence of the NSA remained hidden from the public. It wasn’t until the post-Watergate era that the Senate learned not only that the NSA existed, but also that it was spying on Americans.
“When I tried to make a CCTV report for CBS while standing outside the NSA gate,” journalist Daniel Schorr recalled of the time, “a U.S. Marine warned me that I would be shot if I didn’t leave.”
This year, almost fifty years later, the NSA has launched its own podcast, ‘No Such Podcast’, titled after a play on the old joke about what the acronym stands for (‘No Such Agency’).