Since Skype was developed in 2003 children, and their parents, have want to video chat with Santa Claus. In the beginning of course the experience left much to be desired, dropped calls and the lag time between the voice and the lips were very troublesome. Now more than 10 years later the experience has been transformed into something magical. In addition to Skype we have Hello Santa, Talk to Santa and even department stores like JC Penney's offering video chats with the jolly 'ol elf at the North Pole.

Video chats or video calls with Santa create an amazing experience for both the child and Santa. Santa has more time to talk with the children than he typically has in a busy mall or retail outlet. And the parents… they LOVE the videos of the calls and Apps like Hello Santa make it so easy to share the videos with friends and family on social media that everyone in the family can experience it too.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have been involved in video chatting with Santa from the beginning. As you can imagine this is an entirely new experience for many Santa Claus' who are trained as "Snapshot Santas" that is they have 45 to 90 seconds with each child with the main focus being to capture 2 or 3 snapshots of the child with Santa Claus. Video calls with Santa are entirely different and have an entirely different focus.

The intention of the video chat is of course to have a great time in the process but also to create a 3 or 4 minute video that captures the unique magical relationship between the child or children and Santa Claus.

During video chats it's possible for the child to show Santa a piece of their artwork, or a school project, or sing a song with Santa, and Santa, and this is the huge difference between video chat Santas and Snapshot Santas,  Santa get's to be if his full, jolly, Santa glory for an extended period of time. This means that not only is Santa's look important but so is his personality and his ability to convey his jolly nature in an authentic fun way.

When training Santas to be extraordinary at video chatting I cover the specific elements that make up an exceptional Santa video chat experience and results in a video that captures a cherished memory for ever.