Printable letter from Santa: how to make one look real at home

A printable letter from Santa can look wonderful or it can look like it came out of the printer in the hall. The difference is mostly paper and a few settings. Here is what we found while setting up our own press.

Paper is most of it

Ordinary copier paper is thin and bright white. Santa does not write on copier paper. Buy a small pack of cream or ivory paper at 28 to 32 lb (about 105 to 120 gsm). Office stores and craft stores both carry it. One pack does years of letters. If you can find a laid or linen finish, better still; the texture reads as "old" even under a lamp.

Print at 100 percent

Every print dialog wants to "fit to page", which shrinks the letter and leaves a wide white frame. Set the scale to 100 percent, or "actual size", and set the paper to US Letter. The Bureau’s letters are laid out for that page exactly.

Color or black and white

Color ink is expensive and most home printers make a green seal look a little blue. If your printer is a good one, print the color edition. If it is an old inkjet, print the black and white edition instead. The Bureau designs a separate one-ink version for exactly this reason; it is not a greyed-out copy of the color letter. It reads as an engraving, and it uses a fraction of the ink.

Fold it once, not twice

A letter folded in thirds looks like a bill. Folded once, across the middle, it fits a 6 by 9 inch envelope and looks like a note someone cared about. If you only have standard envelopes, fold in thirds but crease gently.

The envelope sells it

Write your child’s name and address on the envelope by hand, in your best writing, in dark ink. "The North Pole" as the return address is enough. A small sticker on the flap does the work of a wax seal. Do not add a fake stamp; children notice, and it teaches them to look for the trick.

What a free template gives you

A free letter from Santa template is a decorated page with blanks. It can look nice. What it cannot do is know your child. The wording is the same for every child who gets it, and a seven-year-old who has seen one at a friend’s house will recognize it.

If you have the time, write your own. Our guide on how to write a letter from Santa walks through it. If you would rather not, the Bureau’s digital letter is $6.95: a letter written about your child from the details you give, checked so it never invents anything, read and approved by you, then sent as a color PDF and a black and white PDF within minutes. Print it on the cream paper above and nobody will know it did not come by sleigh.