Well, way up north where the air gets cold
There’s a tale about Christmas that you’ve all been told
And a real famous cat all dressed up in red
And he spends the whole year workin’ out on his sled

It’s the little Saint Nick
Ooooo, little Saint Nick
It’s the little Saint Nick
Ooooo, little Saint Nick

Just a little bobsled we call it old Saint Nick
But she’ll walk a toboggan with a four speed stick
She’s candy-apple red with a ski for a wheel
And when Santa hits the gas, man, just watch her peel

It’s the little Saint Nick
Ooooo, little Saint Nick
It’s the little Saint Nick
Ooooo, little Saint Nick

Run run reindeer
Run run reindeer
Whoaa
Run run reindeer
Run run reindeer

He don’t miss no one

And haulin’ through the snow at a frightenin’ speed
With a half a dozen deer with Rudy to lead
He’s gotta wear his goggles ’cause the snow really flies
And he’s cruisin’ every pad with a little surprise

It’s the little Saint Nick
Ooooo, little Saint Nick
It’s the little Saint Nick
Ooooo, little Saint Nick

Ahhhhhh
Oooooooo
Merry Christmas Saint Nick
Christmas comes this time each year

Ahhhhhh
Oooooooo
Merry Christmas Saint Nick
Christmas comes this time each year

Ahhhhhh
Oooooooo
Merry Christmas Saint Nick
Christmas comes this time each year

Fans of the movie “Elf,” the 2003 holiday comedy starring Will Ferrell as Buddy the Elf, may remember the dinner scene in which Buddy lists the elf food groups after swigging down an entire 2-liter plastic bottle of Coke at the dinner table. “We elves try to stick to the four main food groups – candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup,” he says. He then produces a vial of maple syrup to pour on his meal – a spaghetti dinner.

If you haven’t seen this movie about a man adopted by Christmas elves who returns to the human world to find his biological father, you’re in for a treat. Will Ferrell is delightful, and the supporting cast is great. James Caan stars as Buddy’s real dad, Ed Asner is Santa Claus (the real one!), Mary Steenburgen is Buddy’s stepmom and Bob Newhart is Papa Elf. This fun holiday movie is clever enough to keep the attention of everyone in your family, from young to old. Need a sneak peak? Or perhaps a refresher if you’re already a fan?

Here’s the wonderful “elf food groups” scene from the movie.

Through the magic of sites like Capture The Magic and The Santa Video, you can now get proof of Santa’s visit to show your kids.

All you need to do is visit Capture The Magic and upload a photo of your living room, family room, or wherever you want to “catch Santa” in the act. Then choose your favorite image of Santa Claus and use the easy online tools to adjust the image until Rudolph himself won’t be able to tell that you didn’t actually stay up until midnight to catch Santa at work. You don’t need any special skills or artistic abilities to pull off this magic; if you can upload a photo, you’ll be able to create a believable photo of Santa in your home.

And if you want to take it a step further, you can use the same photo to capture a video of Santa in your house at The Santa Video.com. Once again, all you’ll need is the ability to upload a photo and make a few tweaks, and they’ll do all the rest. Take a look at the video below to see how believable your video will look.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but seeing your kids’ face light up when they see a video or picture of Santa in your house will be priceless.

I was only in second grade at the time and had learned the truth from our older brother. I must not have believed him at first because to prove his point he ushered me out to my grandparents’ mobile trailer where my parents had stashed the goodies. And there was the proof – all the toys and gifts we had asked Santa to bring. Eureka! My big brother had obviously stumbled upon a giant secret. Thinking that my sister should also be privy to this discovery, I promptly went to inform her that Santa didn’t exist.

I don’t remember her reaction to the news, but she says she cried. And 35 years later, she still reminds me of my evil deed and gives me a bad time about destroying her belief in Santa. It’s become something of a joke between us, but now that we both have children, I realize just how young she was when I broke the spell, and I feel bad that I was the one who took that magic away from her.

My own son is eight now, and I’m glad he still believes. I’ve tried to keep the magic going for as long as I can, by sending Christmas letters from Santa and reminding him to be on his best behavior to stay on Santa’s Nice List. This year I might even try showing him real Santa pictures of the jolly old elf in our house. But I imagine that some day soon – either this season or perhaps next – one of his friends will break the news and he’ll come to ask us the truth. What will I say?

I’ve learned from experience that often the best answer to these tricky questions is another question: what do YOU think? Often kids don’t want a big long explanation. It reminds me of the joke about a little boy who asked his mom where he came from and she went into a detailed explanation about the birds and the bees. When she finished he said, “But where do I come from? Johnny is from Chicago.”

So my first response will be to find out what he thinks. If he’s not ready to let go of the magic, I will let him continue to believe and tell him that I, too, believe, and we’ll leave it at that. But if, as I suspect, he’s too smart for that and realizes all those shopping mall Santas look different and no one could fly around the whole world in one night, then I’ll have to tell him the truth.

But when I do, I’ll tell him that I still believe in Santa. I believe that the spirit of giving that lives today in the myth of Santa comes to us from the very real spirit of Saint Nicholas, a generous soul who donated his fortune to the poor and spent his life helping those in need, particularly children. His compassion and generosity set a very real example for millions of people who have translated his good deeds into the legend of Santa.

And I believe we are always given gifts in life when we try our best, play well with others, and remember to use our manners. These are qualities Santa always looks for when deciding who goes on the Nice list and who goes on the Naughty list. But we don’t need the fear of Santa’s list to practice these traits. All we need to know is that these qualities will bring us gifts every day of our life. These gifts may not come in boxes, bags, or bows, but they will come to us in the form of lasting friendship, love, and happiness.

I also believe in the magic of Santa. I believe life is miraculous, magical and wonderful, just like Santa, but only those who are willing to believe in the mystery will be able to see the beauty in a world that is also full of war, hunger, hatred and fear. Just as with a belief in Santa, the magic will disappear as soon as you choose to let it go. Belief in magic takes patience and care. Many people cannot see small miracles that happen around them every day because they are so blinded by the trappings of our fast-paced society.

I believe what Santa gives to children and adults alike is the ability to see life through the eyes of a child. We are reminded that it’s important to play and laugh, to let our imagination run wild, and to hope for the impossible. These are things I can believe in.

I hope that when my son realizes Santa is only a symbol for all these good things, he won’t be too disappointed and will still want to share the legend of Santa Claus with his kids some day. I think the world would be a much sadder place without the jolly old elf. I only hope my son agrees.

Reprinted with permission from Is Santa Real? How Do You Answer the Question? by lisadh on Squidoo

Many parents may want to write their own letter from Santa Claus so they can make it more personal, but sometimes they’re stumped by the process of writing and creating the letter. They’re not sure what to say or how to make it look fun and colorful. If you’re one of those people, don’t despair! Santa letter templates can help you create a great-looking, personalized letter at home for less than you’d pay a professional Santa letter company. If you want an inexpensive way to create a Santa letter for your child, they may be the answer you’re seeking.

Here are 3 reasons to use Santa letter templates:

Save money. Santa letter templates are usually offered as Microsoft Word documents that you download once, often for less than you’ll pay for a single letter from professional letter companies. You can use it repeatedly simply by editing the text. So if you have three kids or a whole classroom of them, you still only pay for one document, making a Santa letter template cheaper even than some of the offers you’ll find on eBay.

Personalized content. Many professional Santa letter companies only offer one letter design and don’t always let you see what the content of the letter will look like. With a Santa letter template, you can choose your background design, and the content is completely editable, so you can change or add to the existing text. At Santa Letter Templates, each letter also comes with the text for three alternate letters, so you have many options for changing the wording.

No waiting. When you order from a Santa letter company, you have to wait for snail mail to deliver your purchase. With Santa letter templates, you can download your letter as soon as you make your purchase, so there’s no waiting. It’s a great solution for busy parents who miss the ordering deadline of the big sites.

Environmentally friendly. Because Santa letter templates are pdf files that you download from your computer, there’s no need to send put a piece of paper in an envelope, attach a stamp and send in a mail truck or plane, which means less pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Your document is delivered instantly to your email box. You can then print it at home, which allows you to use recycled paper or tree-free paper, if you choose.

You can get Santa letter templates right here at Santa Letter Templates.com.

This article originally appeared in an edited version as 3 Reasons to Use Santa Letter Templates on Squidoo.

What is your child wishing for this Christmas season? There’s no better way to let Santa Claus know what’s on your child’s wish list than by printing out this Santa wish list template at home and letting your child fill in the blanks with all their desired items. Is your daughter hoping for a new bike with a horn? Does your son want a Razor scooter? Are they both hoping for a new Disney movie DVD or a great new video game?

Make sure Santa Claus (as well as Mom, Dad and grandparents, too!) know what the special kids in your life are hoping to find under the tree or stuffed inside their stocking this year. Filling out this Santa wish list template is good practice for writing and spelling, and it serves a useful purpose, too – you won’t have to guess about gifts!

To use this free Santa wish list template, simply click the image below to open the document in a pdf file. You’ll need Adobe Reader to open the document. (If you don’t have Adobe Reader, visit Adobe to get free download.) Then print the page on your printer at home and help your child write his or her list.

Santa Wish List Template

Happy holidays!

This site lets you create a free Santa message video that is personalized with your child’s information, such as name, age, location and other details you provide. You can even upload a photo that  Santa will then show your child in the video message.

Santa’s Portable North Pole (PNP) first appeared during Christmas 2008 and was an immediate success. More than 1 million people created videos in the first month, and more than 10 million videos have now been created. The site is only available during the holiday season, and this year promises to offer even more features. According to site developer UgroupMedia, the 2010 PNP site will not just offer messages for children, but will have new video messages tailored to specific groups of people (i.e., friends, business associates, lovers, etc.). There will also be a new iPhone/iPod/iPad app and a daily bulletin with news from Santa’s elves.

If you’re already planning to send a Santa letter this year, a Santa message video will add to the thrill and make Santa’s magic even more real. Visit Portable North Pole.tv to check it out.

“Fahoo Forays” is the name of the song the Whos sing in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Dr. Seuss invented the words of the song to sound like classical Latin. Seuss was so successful that some people thought it was real Latin and wanted the translation.

In A Year Without A Santa Claus, a little girl is writing the word Christmas with a crayon, but the letters seem to appear before she actually writes them.

- The color of the Grinch’s eyes change from red to blue after he has his “change of heart.”

- The real name of the song many people only know as “Charlie Brown Christmas song” is “Christmas Time is Here.”

- In Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the does don’t have antlers, but reindeer are the only type of deer where both sexes do have antlers.

- Boris Karloff’s voice was mechanically altered to give him the gravelly Grinch voice heard in the How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

- In Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, the Burgermeister slips on a toy duck at the top of the stairs. But there is no duck on the stairs when he is shown coming out of the building.

- “Linus and Lucy,” which became the theme song for all the Charlie Brown specials, was written for A Charlie Brown Christmas. This was the first animated show starring the Peanuts characters created by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz

- The only time Lucy ever refers to Charlie Brown just “Charlie” in a Peanuts special is shortly before she discusses the commercialization of Christmas in A Charlie Brown Christmas. Thereafter, she always calls him Charlie Brown .

- In Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the only elf who doesn’t have pointy ears is Hermey.

- In Frosty the Snowman, the number of fingers on Frosty’s hands change. When he is trying to count to 10, he has five fingers on one hand and four on the other. After he is done counting , he has four fingers on each hand.

The gift-giving bishop St. Nicholas was never portrayed as having a wife, and only when he was transformed, via Sinterklaas, into the more secular Santa Claus in the early 19th century did a wife appear.

The wife of Santa Claus is first mentioned in the short story “A Christmas Legend” (1849), by James Rees, a Philadelphia-based Christian missionary. In the story, an old man and woman, both carrying a bundle on the back, are given shelter in a home on Christmas Eve as weary travelers. The next morning, the children of the house find an abundance of gifts for them, and the couple is revealed to be not “old Santa Claus and his wife”, but the hosts’ long-lost elder daughter and her husband in disguise.

Mrs. Santa Claus is mentioned by name in the pages of the Yale Literary Magazine in 1851, where the student author (whose name is given only as “A. B.”) writes of the appearance of Santa Claus at a Christmas party:

[I]n bounded that jolly, fat and funny old elf, Santa Claus. His array was indescribably fantastic. He seemed to have done his best; and we should think, had Mrs. Santa Claus to help him.

An account of a Christmas musicale at the State Lunatic Asylum in Utica, New York in 1854 included an appearance by Mrs. Santa Claus, with baby in arms, who danced to a holiday song.

A passing references to Mrs. Santa Claus was made in an essay in Harper’s Magazine in 1862; and in the comic novel The Metropolites (1864) by Robert St. Clar, she appears in a woman’s dream, wearing “Hessian high boots, a dozen of short, red petticoats, an old, large, straw bonnet” and bringing the woman a wide selection of finery to wear.

A woman who may or may not be Mrs. Santa Claus appeared in the children’s book Lill in Santa Claus Land and Other Stories by Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman, published in Boston in 1878. In the story, little Lill describes her imaginary visit to Santa’s office (not in the Arctic, incidentally):

“There was a lady sitting by a golden desk, writing in a large book, and Santa Claus was looking through a great telescope, and every once in a while he stopped and put his ear to a large speaking-tube.

“Presently he said to the lady, ‘Put down a good mark for Sarah Buttermilk. I see she is trying to conquer her quick temper.’

“‘Two bad ones for Isaac Clappertongue; he’ll drive his mother to the insane asylum yet.’”

Later, Lill’s sister Effie ponders the tale:

Effie sank back in the chair to think. She wished Lill had found out how many black marks she had, and whether that lady was Mrs. Santa Claus—and had, in fact, obtained more accurate information about many things.

Much as in The Metropolites, Mrs. Santa Claus appears in a dream of the author E. C. Gardner in his article “A Hickory Back-Log” in Good Housekeeping magazine (1887), with an even more detailed description of her dress:

She was dressed for traveling and for cold weather. Her hood was large and round and red but not smooth, — it was corrugated; that is to say, it consisted of a series of rolls nearly as large as my arm, passing over her head sidewise, growing smaller toward the back until they terminated in a big button that was embellished with a knot of green ribbon. Its general appearance was not unlike that of the familiar, pictorial beehive except that the rolls were not arranged spirally. The broad, white ruffle of her lace cap projected several inches beyond the front of the hood and waved back and forth like the single leaves of a great white poppy, as she nodded emphatically in her discourse.

Her outer garment was a bright colored plaid worsted cloak reaching to within about six inches of the floor. Its size was most voluminous, but its fashion was extremely simple. It had a wide yoke across the shoulders, into which the broad plain breadths were gathered; and it was fastened at the throat by a huge ornamented brass hook and eye, from which hung a short chain of round twisted links. Her right arm protruded through a vertical slit at the side of the cloak and she held in her hand a sheet of paper covered with figures. The left arm on which she carried a large basket or bag — I couldn’t tell which — was hidden by the ample folds of the garment. Her countenance was keen and nervous, but benignant.

Santa Claus’ wife made her most active appearance yet by Katherine Lee Bates in her poem “Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride” (1889). “Goody” is short for “Goodwife”, i.e., “Mrs.”

In Bates’ poem, Mrs. Claus wheedles a Christmas Eve sleigh-ride from a reluctant Santa in recompense for tending their toy and bonbon laden Christmas trees, their Thanksgiving turkeys, and their “rainbow chickens” that lay Easter eggs. Once away, Mrs. Claus steadies the reindeer while Santa goes about his work descending chimneys to deliver gifts. She begs Santa to permit her to descend a chimney. Santa grudgingly grants her request and she descends a chimney to mend a poor child’s tattered stocking and to fill it with gifts. Once the task is completed, the Clauses return to their Arctic home. At the end of the poem, Mrs. Claus remarks that she is the “gladdest of the glad” because she has had her “own sweet will”.

Since 1889, Mrs. Claus has been generally depicted in media as a fairly heavy-set, kindly, white-haired elderly female baking cookies somewhere in the background of the Santa Claus mythos. She sometimes assists in toy production, and oversees Santa’s elves. She is sometimes called Mother Christmas, and Mary Christmas has been suggested as her maiden name.

Her reappearance in popular media in the 1960s began with the children’s book How Mrs. Santa Claus Saved Christmas, by Phyllis McGinley. Today, Mrs. Claus is commonly seen in cartoons, on greeting cards, in knick-knacks such as Christmas tree ornaments, dolls, and salt and pepper shakers, in storybooks, in seasonal school plays and pageants, in parades, in department store “Santa Lands” as a character adjacent to the throned Santa Claus, in television programs, and live action and animated films that deal with Christmas and the world of Santa Claus. Her personality tends to be fairly consistent; she is usually seen as a calm, kind, and patient woman, often in contrast to Santa himself, who can be prone to acting too exuberant. In some modern adaptations, Mrs. Claus is shown with a younger, even sexier appearance.

– Source: Wikipedia: Mrs. Claus”

The wife of Santa Claus is first mentioned in the short story “A Christmas Legend” (1849), by James Rees, a Philadelphia-based Christian missionary. In the story, an old man and woman, both carrying a bundle on the back, are given shelter in a home on Christmas eve as weary travelers. The next morning, the children of the house find an abundance of gifts for them, and the couple is revealed to be not “old Santa Claus and his wife”, but the hosts’ long-lost elder daughter and her husband in disguise.

Mrs. Santa Claus is mentioned by name in the pages of the Yale Literary Magazine in 1851, where the student author (whose name is given only as “A. B.”) writes of the appearance of Santa Claus at a Christmas party: “[I]n bounded that jolly, fat and funny old elf, Santa Claus. His array was indescribably fantastic. He seemed to have done his best; and we should think, had Mrs. Santa Claus to help him.” A

n account of a Christmas musicale at the State Lunatic Asylum in Utica, New York in 1854 included an appearance by Mrs. Santa Claus, with baby in arms, who danced to a holiday song. A passing references to Mrs. Santa Claus was made in an essay in Harper’s Magazine in 1862, and in the comic novel The Metropolites (1864) by Robert St. Clar, she appears in a woman’s dream, wearing “Hessian high boots, a dozen of short, red petticoats, an old, large, straw bonnet” and bringing the woman a wide selection of finery to wear.

A woman who may or may not be Mrs. Santa Claus appeared in the children’s book Lill in Santa Claus Land and Other Stories by Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman, published in Boston in 1878… Santa Claus’ wife made her most active appearance yet by Katherine Lee Bates in her poem “Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride” (1889).

“Goody” is short for “Goodwife” or “Mrs.” In Bates’ poem, Mrs. Claus wheedles a Christmas Eve sleigh-ride from a reluctant Santa in recompense for tending their toy and bonbon laden Christmas trees, their Thanksgiving turkeys, and their “rainbow chickens” that lay Easter eggs. Once away, Mrs. Claus steadies the reindeer while Santa goes about his work descending chimneys to deliver gifts. She begs Santa to permit her to descend a chimney. Santa grudingly grants her request and she descends a chimney to mend a poor child’s tattered stocking and to fill it with gifts. Once the task is completed, the Clauses return to their Arctic home. At the end of the poem, Mrs. Claus remarks that she is the “gladdest of the glad” because she has had her “own sweet will”.

The 1956 popular song by George Melachrino, “Mrs. Santa Claus,” helped standardize and establish the character and role in the popular imagination.

From Wikipedia article on Mrs. Claus.