Santa Meets The Digital Age

Is your child too old to sit on Santa's lap, but still young enough to enjoy his North Pole offerings? Do you have someone in your life who may not be a kid anymore, but is still young at heart? Most of us could answer 'yes' to at least one of these questions, if not both. You want a unique way to wish them a Merry Christmas that is a lot of fun but doesn't cost a lot of money. After all, just because we're in a recession doesn't mean we have to be boring. There are plenty of ways to bring the fun of Santa to your house without spending a lot of money. In fact, some of the best are free! Here's one of my favorites.

Portable North Pole (http://www.portablenorthpole.tv/home) is a site that allows you to make someone a personalized video 'from Santa'. All you have to do is go to the website and input some information about the person. The options are for a child or an adult, naughty or nice. When you go to make a video for a child, it will ask you for the child's name, location and how old they are. Santa will ask you to confirm how to pronounce the child's name; for people whose names are frequently mispronounced, this is very helpful! In order to make it even more personal, the site will ask you to indicate fun facts about the child by selecting from a list of options. Some are basics like 'is in sixth grade', but you can also say, 'is a clever kid' or something like that.

To drive home the point that 'Santa is watching', the site will ask you what sorts of things you've been trying to get your child to do this year. I made my nephew one that said, 'always be nice to his brother and sister', but there were options like 'get to the toilet on time', 'listen to your mom', 'stop leaving your toys on the floor', etc. If you want to, you can upload pictures for Santa to use, but you don't have to. You can indicate what particular gift your child wants for Santa and if you want him to mention it in the video. It was really fun hearing Santa say, 'Playstation 3', since that's not something I remember hearing from him when I was a kid.

No Santa video would be complete without the elves declaring whether or not someone was 'naughty' or 'nice'. PNP does this by having the elves put the information you've given in their 'machine' and wait to hear if the kid has been naughty or nice. I haven't seen anyone being given a lump of coal, but the child will get a kick out of seeing what the 'machine' says!

Like I mentioned above, there is also an option to make a card for an adult. I made one for my husband just for the fun of it. The process is the same in terms of entering things about the person, but the options for the adults' behavior are much more, um, colorful than the ones for children! I don't mean that to say they are obscene, but most people don't tell their kids to stop looking at other women or scratching in public!

Even if they don't believe in Santa Claus, everyone on your list will get a kick out of these personalized Santa videos. You can have them sent to your email or directly to the person, your choice. If you want to be especially silly, you can also schedule for another video to be sent on their birthday! My nephew's is in August so that probably wouldn't work as well, but it's still a hilarious thing to do. Enjoy!