The holiday season is one of my favorite times of the year. I love how happy it makes everyone in my family, the anticipation of Christmas and the fun of decorating my home inside and out with my kids. Christmas for our family is full of traditions. From ones that my husband and I grew up with, to new ones we’ve discovered throughout the years. This time of year has always been a time of family, celebrating the birth of Jesus and creating a loving and fun atmosphere with all those around us.
One of our favorite and must-do Christmas traditions is writing to Santa Claus! My kids and I normally sit down and think of 3 things they’d like to ask Santa to bring them. We ask him about his life at the North Pole, the reindeer and the elves and my kids even create drawings to send him sometimes.
Since I know that it’s not always easy to make it to the post office during the holidays, I decided to help out my fellow neighboring parents by turning our Sharing Library into a North Pole Express Mailbox! This way, the kids in our neighborhood could easily write to Santa AND get a response without having to wait in line at the local post office.
I created a sign that shared exactly how to write to Santa, I used the address: Santa Claus, 1225 Snowberry Lane, The North Pole ( this is something I created just for our mailbox, it’s NOT a real address to send Santa letters to) and let parents know to include a self-addressed and stamped envelope with their children’s letter to Santa. Santa then would respond every weekend to that week’s letters.
We placed our North Pole Express Mailbox in the front yard, decked it out with some festive lights and even lit up the inside so that is was easy to read the directions at night time. I then offered free Santa Letter Templates that I created (you can find the same ones I used HERE) in a folder for those that wanted an easy letter writing experience.
I decided that I would respond to each letter personally so that every child would get a different experience. I created a From The Desk Of Santa Template for me to type the letters out on and created 4 different versions of letters that I could tweak to fit each response. It’s very important to me that if multiple children in a household write to Santa that they EACH receive a different style letter from him. I also found some great Nice List certificates that I can include in the letters as well at Target!
You can download the same From The Dest Of Santa Template I created for FREE HERE!
It’s been only a few days since installing our North Pole Express Mailbox and we’ve had a wonderful response within our neighborhood! The mailbox has received 13 letters so far and I can’t wait to see how many more show up.
DIY North Pole Express Mailbox:
Want to create your own North Pole Express Mailbox? Here’s everything I used to create ours including FREE access to the printables I created for it.
Materials:
- Simplay3 Sharing Library
- Battery Operated LED String Lights (these are inside the window and around the outside post)
Free Printables:
- Letter to Santa Printable Template
- From the Desk of Santa Printable Template ( Save the image to your computer, then add it to a word document and make it the size of the paper. You can then type out your letter)
- North Pole Express Mailbox Instructions Insert ( Save the image to your computer, then add it to a word document that’s set to horizontal and make it the size of the paper)
Let me know how your mailbox turns out! Happy Holidays!
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