Frequently asked questions

No. You can order as a guest and pay by card at checkout. This is different from our old site, which required an account.

An account is still worth having: when you are signed in, every letter you start saves itself to your account automatically, so you can stop halfway and pick it up later on any device. You can sign in with an email and password, or with Google or Microsoft.

Ordering for the 2026 season opens November 1, 2026 and closes December 20, 2026. You can browse the letters and write and preview one at any time, free, before ordering opens.

No. Santa writes each child their own letter, and you personalize each one separately. You can pick a different story for each child if you like.

Letters going to the same home are packed and mailed together, so no child in the house gets theirs days before the others.

Yes. In your cart, choose Edit this letter on that line. The letter reopens exactly as you left it, with all of your wording and details intact. You can also add or remove keepsakes on the line, and remove the letter entirely.

Enter it on the shipping step, in the order summary, before you continue to payment. The discount is applied to your total there.

Yes, and there is no catch. You can write, personalize and preview the whole letter for free, without an account and without paying. You only pay when you decide to order. Before a letter can go in your cart you have to tick a box confirming that you have read it and approve it exactly as it appears.

All of it. We fill in the basic details for you, and then every word is yours: the letter text, the date and the closing. Tap any gold highlight to change that detail everywhere in the letter at once.

If you would rather write the whole thing yourself, choose Write Your Own Letter and you will get a blank sheet of Santa's stationery.

Santa writes on a single sheet, so there is a limit. The type sizes itself to your letter, so short letters still fill the page nicely. If you write more than will fit, the words past the limit turn red as you type and we will ask you to shorten it before ordering.

Yes. Each letter is postmarked from the North Pole and closed with Santa's wax seal.

The letter's own envelope is addressed to your child from Santa, North Pole postmarked and wax sealed. That envelope travels inside a plain outer envelope or box.

There are two reasons for the outer wrapper. It protects the wax seal from the sorting machines, and it means nothing on the outside of the mail gives the surprise away before a grown-up can hand the letter over.

Shipping is worked out at checkout from the actual postage for what you have ordered and where it is going, so you are not paying a padded flat fee.

A letter on its own, or a letter with a Nice List ID Card, is flat enough to post as an ordinary letter and ships free to US addresses until December 15, 2026. Anything bulky, such as Santa's Magic Key or the North Pole Gift Box, has to travel as a parcel and is charged at cost. International orders are always charged.

When you choose a shipping speed you will see an estimated arrival window for that speed, worked out from our workshop time plus USPS transit. If a window runs past December 24 we say so in red, right on the option, so you can choose a faster one.

Those are estimates, not promises. Once a letter is with the Post Office its journey is out of our hands, and December is their busiest month of the year.

Parcels and the Priority services carry tracking, and we will email you when your order ships. Ordinary first-class letter mail, which is what the free option uses, does not carry a tracking barcode, so there is nothing to follow for those. If following your order matters to you, choose a Priority service at checkout.

Yes. We ship to Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand by Priority Mail International.

International orders are never eligible for free shipping, and they need to be placed early: overseas transit is slower and customs can add time we cannot predict.

Yes, and you no longer have to call us about it the way you did on our old site. On the shipping step, add each delivery address and choose which letters go to which home. Each home gets its own shipping speed and its own postage.

We accept all major credit and debit cards. Payments are processed by Stripe, which is certified to the highest level of card security (PCI Level 1). Your card details are encrypted and never touch our servers.

Yes. You will see your order number on screen as soon as the order is placed, and we email you a confirmation. We will email you again when the letters ship.

We collect New Jersey sales tax on orders shipped to New Jersey addresses. Orders to other states are not taxed.

If you are signed in, there is nothing to remember to press: every change saves itself to your account as you go, and you will find the letter under Account → Saved letters.

If you are ordering as a guest, your work is kept on the device you are using, so it survives closing the tab by accident but not switching to a different device.

On the sign-in page, choose Forgot password? and we will email you a link to set a new one. You can also sign in with Google or Microsoft instead of a password.

Create an account using the same email address you ordered with before and we will connect your record automatically. There is no code to enter and no link to click.

Try a different browser first, and make sure it is up to date. If the trouble follows you, use the Need help? button at the top of any page and tell us what happened. A real person reads those.

The details you give us about a child are used for one thing: printing their letter. They are never sold, never shared and never used for advertising.

They are also kept out of order lookups. If someone looks up an order without signing in, all they can see is how many items are in it and where it is going, never a child's name or anything written in their letter. Signing in to your own account is the only way to see the full details of your order.

Our full privacy policy has the rest.

Yes. If you are ever displeased with what we made, we will refund 100% of your purchase. After 19 years of Christmases, we can count the times on one hand.