It’s come to my attention that other businesses & organizations are piggybacking on my Santa Letter event as an activity for their own holiday events. This has brought up a concerning gray-area as to how this event is being used.

While my “Letters to Santa” event was started to spark holiday magic throughout our community, this event was specifically designed for individual families. It was not designed for mass amounts of letters coming in from other folks’ events. I know we’re all just doing our best to provide holiday joy for our community, but I’m finding it necessary to share a few important behind the scene details of this “free” event:

The letters that are sent out to each recipient are dreamed up, designed, hand written, filled with “envelope sized goodies,” and paid for out of pocket by one person. I wish I had the resources to shoulder the time requirements and costs to reply to mass amounts of children across our community. What a blessing that would be! But as a free event hosted by a sole proprietor, my available time, funds for materials and postage, are very limited every year. Especially as postage costs rise constantly, creeping dangerously close to $1 per stamp.

This event has been such a joy for me to do, which is why it hurts to have to set boundaries. However, I can not realistically keep up when 10-20-30-40+ letters are being dropped from other organization’s private events, in addition to the 30-50 I receive organically each year from my own community reach. I’m so very sorry, but there’s a reason I don’t advertise this outside of my own business’s community reach — I simply can’t keep up by myself.

I respectfully and kindly ask that businesses and organizations who want to do a Santa Letter activity with their students, scout troops, daycares, client’s kids, etc, to please keep your activity “in-house.” If you’d like assistance in planning your own event with tips, tricks and ideas I’ve learned over the years, please contact me. I’m happy to share Santa ideas with other “magic makers” to reach as many kids as possible.

There will most likely be a day when I have to shut down this event; Either due to rising postage cost, my own “Santa age” kids becoming too aware of what I’m doing, or simply being to busy as my family grows and kid(s) get older. I just don’t want that time to come prematurely, because I’m solely footing the responsibility of multiple organizations.

Thank you in advance for your understanding.

Jen, Noel Photography and Design