Printable letter from Santa: templates, paper and print settings

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

Print it on cream or ivory paper at 28 to 32 lb (about 105 to 120 gsm). Ordinary copier paper is thin and bright white, and Santa does not write on copier paper. One small pack is all you need. 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

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

Color or black and white

Print the color edition on a good printer, and the black and white edition on an old inkjet. Color ink is expensive and most home printers make a green seal look a little blue. 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

Fold it once, across the middle. It fits a 6 by 9 inch envelope and looks like a note someone cared about. A letter folded in thirds looks like a bill. 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 gives you a decorated page with blanks, and nothing that knows your child. It can look nice. 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.

What is free here, and what is not

Writing and reading the letter is free. Keeping it is paid, from $6.95. We would rather be plain about this than have you find out at the checkout.

Free: writing the letter, and reading all of it. You tell the Bureau a few true things about your child, Santa writes the letter, and the whole thing appears on screen. You can ask for it warmer, funnier or shorter, or edit it yourself, as many times as you like. None of that costs anything and we do not ask for a card to do it. If it is not right, close the tab.

Paid: keeping it. The $6.95 digital edition is the file, in colour and in black and white, to print at home. $16.95 has the Bureau print it on heavy cream stationery and post it to you. $24.95 adds the Nice List certificate.

The Bureau has no free blank template to download. That is not an oversight. A blank template is the thing this guide is about avoiding, and we would rather point you at a good one elsewhere than pretend ours is different because it has our seal on it.

If you only want to see whether the writing is any good, you do not have to start anything. Three real letters are on the site in full, next to the details the parent typed to get them.