How to write a letter from Santa

One specific detail beats a page of praise

The instinct is to write a lot: how good they have been, how proud everyone is, how the elves are working hard. It reads as a form letter, because it is one.

A short letter carrying one thing only your household knows does something a long one cannot. Two sentences of warmth, one impossible detail, and a sign-off will outperform three paragraphs every time.

A structure that works

Keep it to five or six lines. Santa is busy in December and a child knows it.

• ·Open with their name, and nothing else on that line
• ·Name the thing you should not know, plainly, as though it were ordinary
• ·Say one true thing they did this year that deserved noticing
• ·A warm, non-committal line about their list — never a promise
• ·Sign off, and leave the rest to the imagination

Presentation is half of it

Write it by hand if you can, and not in your own handwriting — use your other hand, or write more slowly and larger than usual. Cream or off-white paper reads older than printer white. A slightly uneven fold, a smudge, and a corner that looks travelled all help.

Leave it somewhere it had to arrive rather than somewhere it was placed: propped against the door, half under the tree, weighted down by the empty mince pie plate.

What to leave out

Do not use the letter to enforce behaviour. A letter that mentions being watched, or hints that presents depend on conduct, turns a lovely object into an instrument, and children remember which one they got.

Do not promise a specific present. If the letter names something and it does not appear, the letter is the thing that broke Christmas morning.