Free letter for blind children

Blind or partially sighted children can write to Santa and get a free reply in Braille, audio or large print.

What to do

Father Christmas's chums at the Royal National Institute for the Blind help him translate letters, so kids can read his replies themselves and not rely on sighted people to read them out.

What to include in the letter

Include your child's name, address, contact number, preferred language (English and/or Welsh) and preferred reply format (either uncontracted Braille, contracted Braille, large print (please specify font size) or audio CD.

Where to send it to

Just write to Santa Claus, RNIB, PO Box 173, Peterborough, PE2 6WS by Monday 3 December 2012.

Alternatively you or your child can email santa@rnib.org.uk by Monday 17 December 2012 and you'll get an email reply from him.

Read more at the RNIB. Some of last year's letters gave Martin leaky eyes. See them on his blog: Read letters from blind children to Santa.

NSPCC letter (suggested £5 donation)

As an alternative to the freebies above, the NSPCC offers a letter from Santa for a suggested donation of £5. Create your letter (including name, age, gender, language - English or Welsh - best friend's name and address) online at NSPCC before Mon 17 Dec 2012.

The suggested donation is £5 and although you can donate less, please remember this is a charity and it has to cover the cost of each letter.

Every £5 raised will go to ChildLine, while every £25 will go towards a trained practitioner giving one hour of support on the NSPCC’s helpline for adults who are concerned about a child.

Free personalised video

There's a website that'll send your friends and family free personalised online video messages from Santa (lasting around four minutes); incredibly cute for kids and hilarious for adult recipients!

Just follow this simple step-by-step process. To make it even more fun, upload a photo of the person you're sending it to. You'll need the digital photo handy when you do it.

• STEP 1: Tell the Santa about the recipient.
  Go to the Portable North Pole website and answer the questions, including the recipient's age, whether they've been good or bad (the latter option's only available to adults and teens), their name, gender, where they live and more.

  There's quite a few questions, but it should take less than a minute to complete. The more detail you add, the more fun it is as they'll be mentioned at various points in the video.

• STEP 2: Add a photo.
  You don't have to do this, but again, it makes it more personal. It can be a JPEG, GIF or PNG file with a maximum size of 3MB. All photos uploaded will be deleted from the site's database before the launch of the following year.

• STEP 3: Send to your recipient.
  Enter your name, email address and that of the recipient, plus double check the details. You can use the back button to amend the details at any time. Once happy, if you agree to the terms of use, hit 'ok' and it'll be sent via email to your friend.

If you want to be able to go back and edit it, save the username and enter a password. Hey presto, that's it. You must be over 13 years old to use the site.

It's worth noting, the terms of use state:

"In addition to the information you enter in the PNP registration sheet, we may collect information about your browser type, location, and IP address, as well as the pages you visit.

"We may use "cookies" (small pieces of data we store for an extended period of time on your computer, mobile phone, or other device) to make PNP easier to use, to make our advertising better.

"We may institute programs with advertising partners and other websites in which they share information with us."

So ensure you clear your cache afterwards, if you're not happy with this. Here's a screengrab from one we did: