Love Santa Letters 2009
Christmas is very close now, and many children are excited with their letter from Santa. It isn’t too late to order one for the special children in your life – in fact you have until 5pm …
Tuesday 22nd December if you live in Melbourne
Monday 21st December if you live in another capital city or elsewhere in Victoria
Sunday 20th December if you live in other areas (although very remote places may need longer for the Postie to deliver letters in time.)
Ordering is easy – just fill in our online form and we’ll take care of the rest for you on behalf of Santa.
Christmas laughs…
Reindeer names
Everyone knows Santa’s sleigh is predominantly pulled by his reindeer, but not everyone can remember their names!
As well as the 8 named in the ‘A Visit from St Nicholas’, there are other reindeer in stories about Santa:
- Rudolph – the unusual red-nosed reindeer helps guide the sleigh on particularly dark and foggy nights
- Olive – “olive the other reindeer shouted out with glee”
- Chet – the reindeer in training in “The Santa Clause II”
- Cupid – the reindeer who falls in love with Private (the penguin) in “Merry Madagascar”
Can you add any more?
And you may not know that the original story included Dunder (which became Donder then Donner) and Blixem (later Bliksem then the German Blitzen).
Santa just smiles when asked the names of his reindeer and lets us remember the poem…
Favourite Christmas songs
What are your favourite Christmas songs (not carols)? How often do you listen to them (by choice rather than when walking through a shopping centre!)?
Some of the songs I can think of are:
6 White Boomers by Rolf Harris
I’m dreaming of a White Christmas
Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?
I saw Mummy kissing Santa Claus
Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer (so well known I think it is almost counted in amongst the carols, but I don’t think it really fits there)
Giving Christmas gifts
We usually give a present to our kids’ teachers, leaders, etc. Most other families seem to do this too so it almost feels like we HAVE to give rather than do it because we want to.
This year we’re torn – there’s someone we don’t want to give a gift to but it feels rude and wrong to not give something.
Will the teacher feel insulted to not get anything? That isn’t our intent.
Is it giving the wrong message (to ourselves at least) to give a present we don’t want to give?
Christmas Pudding
We had some delicious Christmas pudding last night, made by our friend’s Mum. She made it ‘properly’ – soaking the fruit for weeks beforehand (in Port in this case).
This pudding was mostly fruit and was about the moistest and yummiest pudding I’ve ever tasted. If I can get the recipe and am allowed, I will share it here too.
Anybody else had some good pudding yet this year?
Air clearance
Flying around Australia requires letting Air Traffic Controllers and airports knowing where you are going – and that includes Santa’s flight on Christmas Eve!
Of course, Santa is special so Airservices (the people who control Australian air space and airports) gives Santa extra help and clearance 0 and warns other pilots to stay out of the way of the sleigh!
Airservices has just added this year’s flight information for Santa to their website so you can keep trackof what is happening with Santa and how he is meeting safety rules for Australia.
Dressing up
How much do you dress up for Christmas Day? Is it a special occasion you get a new outfit for or choose your best clothes in advance? Maybe you have a casual day with the family and wear whatever you grab from the drawer that morning?
I can’t say I buy something new for Christmas Day, but I certainly do my best to look nice and consider dressing up to be part of the celebration (that is, making it a day out of the ordinary).
All my family dresses nicely, if not in their ‘good clothes’, but a couple of my in laws are much more casual (everyday t-shirts and shorts) which surprised me the first year or so. Having said that, they are neat and clean, and I don’t think they have dressy clothes for other occasions either so it works for them and no one seems to mind.
As a kid, we spent half the day on the beach so we mostly wore our good clothes there and then wore bathers!
Do you find that your entire family dresses to the same ‘code’? Does it matter to anyone on the day?
Creating a Christmas Wreath
Having a wreath hanging on your door or veranda is a common tradition in many Australian homes. Have you thought of hanging a homemade wreath?
Making a plastic bag wreath
Here is how my daughter made one a few years ago (she was about 6 at the time and had help) Not only is this child-friendly to make, it can be highly personalised and recycles plastic bags!
- bend a metal coathanger into a circle
- cut the hook part of the coathanger off (unless you prefer to use it for hanging) and make sure sharp edges are hidden/filed
- cut plastic shopping bags into long strips – the more strips you use, the better the final result but 3 bags would be the minimum
- tie the strips onto the circle (double the strip and pull the lengths through the loop is the easiest way)
- spray paint the wreath
- once dry, tie on some Christmas baubles (or plastic holly, Santa ornaments, Lego ornaments, etc)
- use some pretty ribbon to create a large bow at the top, with enough left over to use as a tie for the wreath
- hang it on your door – or give to someone else for their door
And Squiggle Mum has instructions for three lovely wreaths you and/or your young children can make.
Do you have another way to make a wreath you could share with us?
Christmas wreaths
Do you hang a Christmas wreath on your front door? Or somewhere else?
A wreath is both pretty and cheerful, and I find them quite welcoming as well. There is such a variety of wreaths that see as you view homes – from the elaborate ones in shopping centres, to stylish ones, green traditional ones and colourful ones.
What type do you prefer?
If you are interested in hanging a wreath but don’t have one, why not make one yourself? Or get the kids to make one…
Wrapping presents
Following on from Santa’s Elf ‘s question this morning, when do you wrap presents, I want to know what people use to wrap gifts…
Different shapes and colours – the wrapping adds to the excitement of Christmas 🙂
For many years, we’ve collected wrappings each year and recycled them the following year where possible (kids tend to rip them apart so not everything is reusable!) It’s interesting that a number of people used to give us funny looks about collecting and keeping the paper, but with more ‘green’ sentiment around now, people seem to accept it.
Reusing the paper does save us money, but our real incentive is to save some trees and reduce pollution in the printing and transporting of wrapping paper.
A few times we’ve also used alternatives to paper for wrapping – like when giving some picinic items, we wrapepd them in a light tablecloth and when we use a tea-towell to wrap kitchen tea of house warming gifts.
And young children bring home a wealth of wrapping paper when they do paintings at kinder and childcare! We enver used their favourite artworks, but they were very proud to see presents wrapped in their paper so it was win win all round!
Does being green come into your Christmas wrapping or do you like the pretty, sparkly pile of presents?
Give the ingredients…
We’ve found a fun gift idea that is fairly inexpensive but gives me an activity with my kids and a nice gift all in one!
Simply put together the items (ingredients) to make something, along with instructions, and give it as a kit.
For food things, we find simple recipes (like muffins or biscuits) and put all the pre-measured dry ingredients into a glass jar. My kids enjoy measuring and we do it in colour layers so the jar also looks interesting. Tie it with some fabric or ribbon, add the recipe and you have a lovely gift. And I think it’s better than giving the muffins or biscuits as the person can enjoy them later (who needs a lot of biscuits the day or so after Christmas??)
For crafty things, I put everything in a shoe box (decorated by the kids usually) or tuile bag. This has a lot of scope – it can be generic items (paints, brushes, paper, etc) or specific items with instructions to make a particular thing (e.g. a cheap photo frame with some paints, brush and glitter.)
Anybody got specific ideas or recipes we could try this year? I’m always after something different even if in the same theme!
BROWSE BY CATEGORY
- About Love Santa
- Baby’s first Christmas
- Children’s craft
- Christmas activities
- Christmas books
- Christmas cooking
- Christmas crafts
- Christmas gifts
- Christmas humour
- Christmas Lights/Decorations
- Christmas Memories
- Christmas spirit
- Christmas today
- Easter
- Green Christmas
- Happy kindness
- International Christmas
- Santa letters
- Santa Memories
- Santa’s snacks
- Christmas elf fun
- Uncategorized
Start your Christmas kit gifts
Â
Â
Order Cut Off Dates
Please note that Love Santa letters need to be ordered before December 18Â to be delivered before Christmas!
Order now to be sure of delivery before Christmas. Keep an eye on our blog for final ordering days as we get close to Christmas Eve.
Â
Privacy Policy
Under no circumstances, not even under threat of having to fill in for Santa on Christmas Eve, will your details of any kind be given, sold or lent to any other party.