Santa Letter and Video
Ensure you don't miss out. Join the 4m who get it emailed each week
Many companies charge around a tenner a time to reply to children's letters to Father Christmas. Yet if you apply to Royal Mail by 11 December, you can get a reponse for free.
What's more, in a matter of minutes, you can send fun online personalised video messages from Santa - whatever the recipients' age - for nowt too.
Free letter
Ignore the numerous companies advertising letters from Santa for a fee, there's a simply way to get one for nothing.
What to doAsk your child - or you can do it if they're too young - to write a letter to Father Christmas and send it to Royal Mail's address by last collection on Friday 11 December '09.
Your little 'un should receive a personally addressed reply before Christmas Eve.
What to include in the letter
In addition to anything your kiddie wants to tell Santa, ensure they include their name, gender (for example, I've been a good boy/girl this year) and a reply address.Also a list of of what they'd like for Christmas would be good too, but remember this doesn't have to include material objects!
Where to send it to
Just pop it in the post (either a 1st or 2nd class stamp is fine) addressed to:|
Santa, Santa's Grotto, Reindeerland, SAN TA1 |
What does the letter look like?
They'll be sent a pretty little card with a standard greeting poem, plus a 'put the clothes on Santa' cut-out game.
Click the image below to enlarge and read the full sample letter (1.4MB)
Free personalised video
There's a website that'll send your friends and family free personalised online video messages from Santa (lasting around 60 seconds); incredibly cute for kids and hilarious for adult reciprients!
Just follow this simply step-by-step process. But to make it even more fun, use a computer that has an image of the person you're sending it too, or load it up beforehand.
- STEP 1: Tell the Santa about the recipient.
Go to Portable North Pole website and start the process, working your way through each screen's questions, which include the reciprient'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.
It's quite a detailed but fun form-filling, but you're given drop-down box options for the creative part so it should take less than a minute to complete.
- STEP 2: Add a photo.
You don't have to do this, but it makes it that little more personal. It can be a JPEG, GIF or PNG file with a maximum size of 3MB. All photos and files uploaded should be deleted from the site's database 30 days from 15 Janiary 2010 - when the web service finishes.
- STEP 3: Add email address and double check everything.
Enter your name, email address and that of the reciprient, plus check everything you've entere thus far.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 sentvia email to your friend.
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.
- STEP 4: Save the username and password, and watch it.
Your friend will be able to watch it using the details the site sends in the email to them, but before you click 'watch', save the username (your email address) and the password so you can refer back to it, if you wish. Hey presto, that's it.
Why does it need so many details?
The more details you give, the more personal and funny the clip will be, as they'll be mentioned at various points in the video (see below).
Further Christmas MoneySaving info:
- More festive tips: Full Christmas MoneySaving list
- Give gifts for £5 and under: Festive Fivers guide
- Cut the price of Christmas: All Christmas guides
- Christmas special offers: MoneySaving E-mail
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