With just over one week left until Christmas Day, we at The Practice have keenly followed how the festive period has been played out via social media. Apart from offering an array of marketing opportunities for brands, there’s one brand in particular that has been making the most of online fan interaction: brand ‘Santa’.

Hand-written Christmas lists posted to a fantasy Lapland address were once de rigueur for children up and down the country- but not anymore. Now, there’s a handy time-saving app entitled ‘Letters to Santa’ that allows kids to write and send via one click simply using their iPad (if they’re lucky enough to own one!) The app is an interactive storybook based around the preparations at Santa’s workshop in the run-up to Christmas. It charts the story of Ruben the reindeer, (Rudolph’s nephew), who has created an invention that helps the elves work more efficiently by letting children send their letters directly to Santa.

We think this is a great and engaging way of getting kids involved in festive storytelling and communicating, but we were slightly more taken aback that ‘tweeting’ a wish list to Father Christmas now seems to have entered many a child’s lexicon. Now, it’s easy to tweet an 140 character ‘letter’ to @letterstosanta, or hash tag using #letterstosanta on both Twitter and Instagram for a chance to see a retweet from the man himself- (although his account is run by a clearly entrusted employee, Maple the Elf!)

The mystery of Santa’s whereabouts and his Christmas Eve route have also been outed thanks to the genius of Twitter. Now, instead of gazing wondrously at the night sky or continuously checking the fireplace for Santa’s arrival, social media fans can use The Norad Santa Tracker to track his global ‘journey’ through Twitter. The account, @NoradSanta set up by the creators of the North American Aerospace Defense Command website, already boasts an impressive 94,599 followers, and tweets endearing reports such as ‘‪#Santa radar detected movement at the North Pole International Airport!’ There’s even a North Pole hotline available to answer calls on current Arctic weather conditions, and callers can leave voicemail messages that will be tweeted via the account @DearSantaTweets or left on the Facebook page ‘Call Santa’.

Like anything, Christmas, and particularly the figure of Santa is a global and multi-faceted enterprise- it’s no wonder there’s much social media activity surrounding the action. It was only a matter of time before Santa and social media marketing joined forces- after all, isn’t the notion of Santa a perfect fit for this? Everyone wants to communicate with and find out more about the enigmatic character and multiple social media channels are definitely a strong way to extend the fantasy! Plus, we think that good old St Nick must receive multiple repeat questions that it only makes sense for any designated Twitter, Facebook or Google + account to send out one universal answer to all these.

Will you be encouraging your children to experience the magic of Christmas by tapping into social media? Or do you think its traditions have been lost because of modern technology? We’d love to hear your comments! Please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and connect with us on Facebook.