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The World Wide Web has, it would appear, made its way all the way up to the North Pole. You know, the real North Pole, the one with the red-and-white barber shop pole and flying reindeer and a jolly old castle that evidently has wi-fi.
For families interested in using the Internet to find out what Santa has been up to, there are plenty of sites to visit:
NorthPole.com has games, recipes and even a good deed calendar for parents to use year-round.
EmailSanta.com offers a count-down clock front and center. Kids can use this site to send an e-mail to Santa. There are also plenty of blog posts updating the events at the North Pole, including, among other things, details on the newest baby reindeer and Santa's test flights:
We did a test flight today. The elves showed me the new sleigh. It is the fastest sleigh yet! It even has a new spot for my hot cocoa!
The reindeer loved the new sleigh too. They were very excited to pull the sleigh. I could hardly keep them still! They were so excited! They all asked very nicely, so I said we could do a test flight.
Well, jumping jingle bells! They flew off in a flash! I thought that we would crash! It was a crazy, silly dash. The new sleigh made a big splash!
ThisIsSanta.com offers a Santa chat room which appears to be manned by elves with questionable typing skills; when I posed as my daughter and told Santa I wanted a high chair for my baby doll, he wrote back, "Hannah Montana is so cool! I will see what I can do to grant your request." Alrighty.
RegardsSC is a fun, simple and free site where you can enter a person's full name, along with three things she's done naughty or nice. Santa will then e-mail you a link to a video, where you can see him checking that specific name off his list.
Of course, there are plenty of Santa services for parents willing to pay. You can buy a letter from Santa for $12.99 or for under $10, give your child a photograph in which Santa has been digitally inserted into your living room. I will confess that I would've loved that when I was a girl. My little brother, on the other hand, would never have slept in our house again.
Our family's favorite Santa site has always been the free service offered by Norad (which is "the bi-national U.S.-Canadian military organization responsible for the aerospace and maritime defense of the United States and Canada"). For over 40 years, they've been "tracking" Santa on Christmas Eve; in the age of Internet, they now offer real-time, animated reports on where he can be found as Christmas Eve progresses.
Plenty of other bloggers are sharing their favorite Santa stories and resources, too:
Leonova's Weblog discusses where Santa really lives.
Karen McAllister of TampaBay.com shares some of the results of her blog's Flat Santa project.
Julie Deardorff of the Chicago Tribune discusses some of the challenges of discussing Santa with your kids.
Have you and your kids found any great Santa resources on-line?
Shannon Lowe is a BlogHer contributing editor (Mommy/Family). She also blogs at Rocks In My Dryer and The Parenting Post.
