Santa Calling

Whether they refer to that jolly old elf as Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, or Kris Kringle, around about this time of year, some smaller members of your family just might be looking for ways to get in touch with him.

After all, it’s important everyone up at the workshop knows how good they have been this year.

And thanks to the miracle of modern day technology, there are a number of ways to get that message through to him, and even hear back.

For 29 years, over 11,000 Santa’s Helpers (aka volunteers) from Canada Post have been running the Santa Letter Writing Program. Kids need to drop a letter in the mail before December 3, addressed to: Santa Claus, North Pole, H0H 0H0. He’ll write back to them in the language in which the letter was originally written (English, French or Braille). But the modern Santa is now ‘new-school’ and is addicted to his email (just like the rest of us). You can now email him and he’ll email a nice note back. Either way, it’s a fun approach to learning about letter-writing (or learning the all-important skill of making sure you get what you want).

And speaking of fun, look for Santa’s Corner on the Canada Post website. It’s full of holiday games, crafts and recipes for the whole family—our favourite is the Build Your Own Snowman game.

If it’s more about the message from Santa than the message to him (sometimes that’s really what’s needed to keep the dream alive), or if you have a child who can’t stand the wait by the mailbox every day, Canadian mom-entrepreneur creation Letters from Santa is a lovely online service where you can create beautiful, personalized, printable response letters in an instant, while helping ease Santa’s work-load considerably. Available in both a free and paid premium ($2.99) version, the letters are full of special details only Santa could know, and come complete with a matching envelope. With these letters, Santa will even address the concerns of kids who are worried he won’t find them because they moved that year, or because they are away from home over the holidays. Your child’s eyes will light up brighter than Rudolph’s nose!

Video is everywhere these days, and even Santa’s jumped on the ‘Santa-tube’ bandwagon. So if you like the customization fun of Elf Yourself, but are looking for something to bring the magic of Christmas alive in a more sentimental way, Magicsanta.ca by Sympatico is the place to go. Just input a few specific pieces of information such as your child’s name, something good they did and what’s on their gift list, and you can instantly create a personalized and unique video message from Santa for your child. The message can be viewed immediately and can even be shared via email, Facebook or Twitter. Kids will be enthralled by the fact that Santa knows their name and where they live. And even better, for every video created, Sympatico will donate $0.25 up to a total of $50,000 to the very worthy Kids’ Help Phone.

Once the kids have made their connection with Santa, they may wonder how he is making out on Christmas Eve, with the enormous task of getting to every child’s house with just the right gift. Make sure to bookmark NORAD’s Santa Tracker and follow his travels by radar and satellites which track the infrared signal from Rudolph’s nose (what else), Santa cams and fighter jets as he makes his way around the globe on Christmas Eve. Volunteers at NORAD have been tracking Santa since 1955 after their Commander in Chief’s hotline number was accidentally published in a Sears ad as Santa’s phone number, and a tradition was born.

So ho-ho-hold the phone—keeping in touch with Santa is easier than you might imagine (imagine being the operative word).

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