Blog · September 23, 2026 · 6 min read

A Letter From Santa After Christmas, and Why It Works

The week after Christmas is the emptiest stretch in a child’s year: the countdown is over, nothing is coming, and half the toys are already boring. A letter from Santa that arrives in that week is doing something none of the December ones can. It looks back, and it lands when nothing else does.

The emptiest week in a child’s year

Nobody warns you about December 27th. The paper is bagged, the boxes are flattened, the grandparents have gone home and school hasn’t started. The thing the whole house counted down to has happened, and there is a flatness that children feel more sharply than adults do because they have fewer weeks to measure it against.

Look at the mail that arrives in that week: bills, a late card, a catalog for something nobody wants. There is nothing in it for them.

Every Santa letter in the world arrives in the other week — into a pile of cards, competing with an advent calendar and a school play, in the most exciting seven days a child gets. One more piece of excitement in an already loud week is not worth much. One good thing in the quiet week is worth a lot.

It can say true things, because it comes afterward

A letter written before Christmas has to be careful. It can’t name what is coming without spoiling it, so it tends toward the general: be good, I’m watching, see you soon. A letter written afterward has facts to work with.

It can say: I hope you have been enjoying that red car. I saw you take it out in the rain on the second day and I laughed. That’s a sentence only somebody who was actually there could write, which is exactly why it works.

It can also handle the thing they asked for and didn’t get. Before Christmas, that subject is a minefield. Afterward it’s just a kind sentence: I know you were hoping for a puppy this year, and it wasn’t this one. There is no explanation, no promise for next time and no blame.

The part parents do not expect to matter most

Almost every family has a hard thing in a year: a grandparent who is gone, a move away from friends, a week in the hospital, a dog who didn’t come home.

Children carry those quietly and often conclude, without saying so, that the adults have moved on. A letter that names it, gently, in the parent’s own words, and then moves on to something warm is a small and genuine comfort.

The rule that matters here is restraint. Say the name. Say they were loved. Don’t promise a reunion, don’t say they are waiting somewhere, and don’t turn it into a lesson about being brave. Give it one or two sentences, then go back to something good. If it’s a pet, a letter from the Rainbow Bridge is a gentler place to start with a younger child.

How to write one yourself

Type it rather than write it. Children learn a parent’s handwriting far earlier than parents expect, and by seven or eight many can spot it on sight. A printed letter removes that problem entirely, which is the reason this whole site exists.

Put it in an envelope with their name on the front and mail it properly. A stamp and a postmark do most of the work.

• Start with what they loved, by name. Not presents in general, the one thing.
• Add a detail only somebody watching would know. The rain, the third day, the fact they slept with it.
• Name the thing that did not come, if there was one. One kind sentence, no reason.
• Say the hard part, if your year had one. Two sentences at most.
• Say what you are proud of. Be specific. A swimming badge beats being good.
• Wish them well for something they are looking forward to.
• Sign it and stop. Two hundred words is plenty.

Or have it done for you

If you want one written, printed on proper paper and mailed to your house, that is what our real mail letters are. You photograph the child’s wish list, we read it back to you, you answer six short questions, and the letter gets written, folded, stamped and posted to arrive after the holiday.

It never promises a future present, never mentions a naughty list, and never mentions a website or a price. As far as that envelope is concerned, it came from the North Pole.

What about the letter before Christmas?

Keep it. The two do different jobs. The December one is anticipation, and it belongs on the mantelpiece with the cards. If you want help with that one, we have a Santa letter you can write and print at home, and a longer guide to what to put in it.

The after-Christmas letter is a keepsake instead. Parents who have done both tend to find the second one is the one that ends up in the memory box.

When to send it

Aim for delivery between December 27th and the first week of January. That means having it in the mail by around the 22nd for domestic mail, allowing for the fact that the postal service is at its busiest in December. The United States Postal Service publishes its recommended send-by dates each year, and they’re worth checking. ¹

If it lands a little late, it doesn’t matter. That’s the point of this letter: it’s the one that isn’t tied to a date.

Why a real letter, and not a video or an email

A physical letter can be held, folded, put under a pillow and found again in six years in the back of a drawer. Nothing on a screen does that.

It also survives a house move and a phone upgrade, which is more than can be said for most of what we make for our children now. If you keep one, keep it flat and out of direct light; the Library of Congress guidance on caring for paper and photographs applies just as well to a letter from the North Pole. ²