Too busy to get to the mall with the kids for their Santa photo or you want to avoid the long line up to see Father Christmas? Or just want to add to the festive Christmas activities you have going on, but this time from the comfort of your own home? As fast as a snap of your fingers and a click of a computer key, you can visit Santa and get him to send a personalized video to that special little boy or girl in your life, young or old.
Santa Personalized Videos
It’s a sign of the times when even Santa is getting Internet savvy. Now parents can create Santa videos that are tailored to each of their children. You can choose whether your child has been naughty or nice and Santa can talk about what good progress they have made in areas from ‘being nice to your sister’ to ‘needing to clean up their room.’ If your child has a more common name, then Santa will use it in the video, he can also talk about the toy your child would like to receive if it is a well known item.
Most of these sites also offer you a choice to make videos for adults and they can be more humorous; it's hard to resist sending a spouse or friend a “you’ve been naughty” message from the Big Elf himself. Most of these sites also allow you to download photos of the child or adult to be inserted into the video.
Free Santa Video Websites
There are a number of sites that offer Santa videos for free. Here are some of the bigger ones.
Sympatico.ca has Magic Santa which has even put out ads on TV to promote itself in Canada. This site offers the above choices; it also lets you download pictures of people that the child or adult has been naughty or nice to.
Portable North Pole is put out by UGroupMedia Inc. and it provides the above options as well as an opportunity to have Santa send a message to the recipient on their birthday. PNP also has a new Facebook application where Santa decides if you have been naughty or nice this year.
You can also get Santa’s Personalized Video Message from Disney Family.com. It’s also free, but you have to register on their site to have access to make the video. Registration is free.
There are also a number of sites out that offer more specific Santa packages, like you can send a photo of your living room and they will have Santa imposed over top, but these tend not to be free as of yet.
Users' Information and Santa Video Sites
As with anything on the Internet, read and fill out the pages carefully. Many of these sites do ask for some personal information like the name, age, birthday and town where the recipient of the card lives. They also may ask for some of your personal information and postal code (companies can do a reverse look up of your postal code to get your address and phone number). Some of the questions you don’t have to answer or you can choose to put in an ‘alternate’ answer. Although the more questions you answer about the recipient the more personal the video will be.
These websites also often have a small button where you may need to click off the check mark that is automatically there in order to say no to receiving information on products, services and special offers from the website, its affiliates and other third parties. You may also need to read the fine print just to see if filling out the information for the video automatically means your information could be shared with other companies and parties. Some of you may be fine with getting such information sent to you or having your information shared, but it’s nice when you know what you are getting yourself into.
Kids Enjoy Santa Messages
Making a personalized video from Santa takes about five minutes to do and it’s a piece of modern day magic that kids are sure to enjoy. It makes for a nice Christmas treat for an indoor day or if you just want to avoid the line up for the mall Santa. Making a video where Santa scold a naughty adult can also make for some festive fun too.
For more tips, check out Visiting Santa at the Mall With the Kids,Read on for tips on How to Prepare Kids for a Visit With Santa and Tips for Taking Best Holiday Photos of Kids.
Tami Nicholson - Tami is the Topic Editor for Parenting Methods at Suite101. She is a mother of two with a background in education and journalism.
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