How to make a personalised letter from Santa on your phone: the sleigh, the nice list of true things from the year, and a link that opens on Christmas Eve to read aloud together.
There is a moment on Christmas Eve, usually after the bath and before the stories, when a small child is as ready to believe as they will ever be. A letter from Santa that arrives exactly then, with their name in it, is one of the cheapest bits of magic you can arrange. You do not need a printer, a stamp or a trip to the post office. You need ten minutes on your phone and a few true things about your child’s year.
How a letter from Santa by link works
A personalised letter from Santa made this way is a little page that opens on your phone, so you read it aloud with your child beside you. It is not a video. The child taps through it, which is the part they remember, and you do the voice.
Santa’s sleigh has been, and the letter with the child’s name, as it looks on a phone.
It begins with one big tap that sends Santa’s sleigh across the screen; a present drops down the chimney with the letter inside. The letter is written in Santa’s voice with your child’s name and your town, and it is signed by Santa. Then comes the nice list, which is where the real work happens.
The nice list is the bit to get right
Children are not impressed that Santa knows their name. They know Santa knows everyone’s name. What stops them in their tracks is Santa knowing that they shared their crayons with Arjun in September, or that they were brave at the dentist, or that they finally learned to ride the bike without stabilisers in the park by the duck pond.
So before you make the letter, write down four or five small, specific, true things from the year. Not “being kind,” but the time they gave their last biscuit to the dog. Not “doing well at school,” but the spelling test they practised all week. You write these; the letter lists them as the things the elves wrote down. A four-year-old hearing their own year read back to them in Santa’s words goes very quiet.
Set it to open on Christmas Eve
You can make the letter any evening in December and choose the day and the time it opens. Until then the link shows a closed envelope and a countdown, which is its own small pleasure for a child who asks every morning how many sleeps are left. On Christmas Eve, at the moment you chose, the sleigh is ready.
A snowman waits at the end to be built with a tap, and you can add a photo of your child if you like. There is nothing on the pages that asks them to buy or sign up for anything; it is signed by Santa and it ends there.
Three ways to use it with the rest of the evening
- The reply. After the letter, let your child dictate a reply to Santa while you write it down, then leave it with the mince pie and the carrot. In the morning it has gone.
- The grandparents. Because it is a link, a grandparent in another country can make and send the letter themselves, and be the one who “knows Santa.” It opens on any phone, in any country, with no app to install.
- The keepsake. Screenshot the nice list. Next December, read last year’s list before you write this year’s. The small true things are the ones that get forgotten.
Preview it before you pay
You can make the letter and look at it exactly as your child will before paying anything, which is useful for checking you spelled the teacher’s name right and that the bike story is in. It is paid for once, as a single card, with nothing to post and no subscription. Then on Christmas Eve, after the bath, before the stories, you say: “I think something’s just come for you.”
- Bex Smith
- Bex Smith